TPO 42 听力原文

Conversation 1

Listen to a conversation between a student and an art history professor.

Hi. I'm Melisa.

I was just a few doors down getting some help in the computer lab.My electronic files won't open.

The technician says it's probably a computer virus. She's working on it now.

Yes, from what Tve heard lots of campus computers have been affected.

What a first week! Huh?

I know, anyhow, I noticed your name on the door as I was walking down the hallway, thought I'd stop in and find out if you happen to have any additional copies of the class syllabus.

The one I received in class the other day is missing a page.

Oh, sorry about that.

I probably have a few extra printouts on hand.

Great! Oh, and I noticed on the syllabus we'll be learning about and eventually writing a paper on "The Bauhaus1 style of art"?

Sounds interesting. Tm looking forward to it.

Right, but technically it doesn't say Bauhaus style of art.It only says the Bauhaus. Oh, what's the difference?

Well, the Bauhaus is not really an artistic style like cubism.

It was the name of an art and design school in Germany in the early 20th century. The Bauhaus was started as an experiment in education, and one ground-breaking technique used in its teaching was that students actively participated in workshops instead of just sitting in classes.

Interesting! I don't have much background in order or anything.

I'm an economics major and Tm taking this class as an elective, decided I wanted to broaden my awareness, try something new!

Excellent! I'm really glad to hear that.

So, was the focus of the Bauhaus architecture, I mean, I studied German and Bauhaus translates into "house for building"...

Well, the founding director was an architect.However, he aimed to combine an incredibly broad variety of fine arts and crafts under one artistic roof.

As a matter of fact, when the Bauhaus first opened, it was without an architecture department for several years.

But later, it became very influential in architecture.

So I wasn't all wrong.

You'll see on the syllabus that you are required to visit the Rutherford Museum exhibit.

The exhibit will help you see that there is no single Bauhaus style.

I think it;s refreshing that this particular exhibit departs from the standard ways in which art from the Bauhaus is often presented.

Which are?

Well, for example, by a specific artist.

I think it's a mistake to focus on a single Bauhaus artist and that person's individual specialty.I mean, the different artists from the school created different things: fabric, sculpture, furniture, graphic design, paintings, even theatrical performances.

The exhibit in the Rutherford Museum unite all these specialties through connecting themes such as motion or the body.

Sounds fascinating!

Say, I've heard of something about discount nights at that museum? Weekends are full price.

It's typically best to go Thursday nights.

That's student discount night, 50% off However, next Wednesday is open to the public for free.It's a special promotion.So I know what I would do.

Lecture 1

Listen to part of a lecture in an art history class.

I am sure you've all been to museum, where you've seen beautiful white marble statues sculpted by the Greeks and Romans, or at least that you've seen photos of such statues, right?

We've come to expect these classical Greek and Roman statues to be monochrome, just one color, white skin, white hair, white eyes, white everything, the natural color of the marble they're carved from.

Now, the ideal of plain white sculpture goes back to 15th century Europe when Renaissance artists rediscovered ancient Greek and Roman culture.

They were inspired by sculptures that appeared monochrome so they created white marble statues.

The impact of these Renaissance statues, such as Michelangelo's David, gave rise to new standards for sculpture, standards that emphasized form rather than color.

But what if many of those ancient statues were originally polychrome, colored from head to toe?

Early in the 19th century, archeologists found traces of paint on ancient sculptures and since then, classical art historians have begun to realize that Greek and Roman marble sculptures were originally colored.

Even if an ancient marble statue doesn't have any visible traces of paint, that does not mean it was originally monochrome.

In many cases, the pigment would've simply deteriorated.

Ancient artists used mineral-based paints with organic binding media that

would've disintegrated on its own overtime.

In other cases, the pigment may have been weathered away while exposed to the elements or someone may have rigorously cleaned the statues and unknowingly removed the last traces of pigment.

So, the fact is, we do have evidence of polychrome sculptures from Greece and Rome from the 7th century B.C.E. all the way through at least the third or fourth century C.E.

It's now generally accepted that most, maybe even all marble sculptures from that time period, receive some kind of surface treatment, like the application of pigments, colored stones or metals that would've modified their color.

So do we interpret the statue differently if we had known it had originally been polychrome?

I feel strongly when it comes to this.

A marble sculpture that had been colored has another layer of meaning that was meant to affect the viewer.

As art historians, we must try to interpret the intentions of the artists.

What were the artists trying to achieve?

Certain features of the sculpture were highlighted through color, were made to stand out.

In other words, they caused the viewer to focus on certain features.

And certain colors represented certain things to the ancient artists and cultures.

A color might symbolize heroism, divinity or youth.

One example to consider is the statue of Roman emperor Augustus.

This particular statue of Augustus that I am referring to was discovered just

outside of Rome in 1863 and was in terrific condition.

It's about 2 meters tall, just larger than life size.

It was made from an expensive high quality type of marble and was obviously carved by an expert.

Now, it still had visible traces of color on the hair, eyes and its clothing and armor. The paints have been very carefully studied.

And it turns out that the colors weren't just from any pigments.

They were from expensive pigments.

The use of these pigments showed the importance of Augustus and that he should be honored.

And let's consider the extensive traces of a red pigment that were found on the statue's cloak.

The cloak is a special garment that was traditionally worn by an emperor on the battlefield.

And in real life it was a red color, which to the Romans, signified the emperor's authority, military and political authority.

Ok, I won't point out any further details about the colors on the Augustus statue, because you can already begin to see that there was cultural importance associated with the colors, symbolism, which should help us understand the status better.

There are many, many more sculptures that have traces of pigments left on them and we have the technology these days to be able to carry out effective studies of these pigments.

There is a lot of work to be done, but it needs to be done fast.

Like I said before, these pigments deteriorate rapidly so we really need to do the research before the traces are gone so that we can increase our understanding of ancient polychrome sculptures and the cultures which created them.

Lecture 2

Listen to part of a lecture in an astronomy class.

Before we continue talking about the properties of individual galaxies, it's worth talking about the distribution of galaxies in space.

Efforts at mapping or surveying the universe, making a sort of atlas of galaxies, have been going on for more than 50 years.

And the creators of the first major map of the universe were the astronomers Harlow Shapley* 1 and Adelaide Ames.

In 1932, Shapley and Ames3 catalogued the positions of 1250 galaxies by photographing what they saw through their telescopes.

And they made an important discovery.

Their survey was the first to indicate that galaxies were not distributed uniformly in space.

Some areas had a lot of galaxies, and other areas had just a few. Another way of putting this is to say that galaxies are clustered.

They're not spread evenly throughout the universe.

So we have stars grouped together in galaxies and galaxies grouped together in clusters. Okay?

Now, after their survey, other astronomers completed surveys that added to the number of clusters catalogued.

One of the most important was done by the astronomer George Abell4

Abell completed his survey in 1958.

It added considerably to the map made by Shapley and Ames.

In fact, his map had over 2700 clusters of galaxies.

That is 2700 clusters of galaxies! Not just galaxies.

But there's another aspect of Abell's work that makes this map so valuable to astronomers.

He introduced a classification scheme for the galaxy clusters5

Now, surveys completed since Abell's have catalogued additional galaxies and surveyed more outer space, but no one has improved upon Abell's classification scheme.

In fact, the Abell catalogue is used as a starting point for astronomers who study these objects.

One of the reasons his scheme has been so widely accepted is because of his sample size.

With all the clusters in his sample, he could determine the different characteristics of clusters.

And these characteristics form the basis of his classification scheme.

Now, two of the characteristics crucial to his classification were richness and symmetry.

So what did he mean by "richness"?

Well, basically it refers to the number of galaxies there are within a cluster.

Is that the same as density?

That's right. Both richness and density refer to the number per area.

Rich clusters, or dense clusters, contain a relatively high number of galaxies.

And symmetry just refers to its shape?

Roughly speaking, yes.

Whether the shape of the cluster was the same on the left side as on the right side.

So Abell use categories like that to classify clusters on a scale: from regular to irregular.

A regular cluster is sphere shaped, symmetrical, and most dense in the middle.

The greatest number of galaxies concentrated in the middle of the cluster.

An irregular cluster might appear to be lopsided, asymmetrical, with a little concentration of galaxies in the center.

You are talking about the shape of the cluster though, not the shape of the galaxies within the cluster.

Right.

For example, let's consider the Coma Cluster.

It's a symmetrical cluster basically spherical in shape, but the individual galaxies within it are elliptical. They're not spherical or spiral shaped, but the cluster itself shows spherical symmetry.

The Virgo Cluster, on the other hand, is considered irregular.

There's no symmetry to its overall shape, no central concentration of galaxies, but it happens to have both elliptical and spiral galaxies within it.

Another question. You were saying how some clusters have more galaxies than others.

How many galaxies does a cluster have to have in order to even be a cluster?

Good question!

Abell's definition of a cluster is this:

First, there have to be more than 50 galaxies within a specific amount of space. He said basically that clusters have a radius of roughly 2 megaparsecs.

And it was just an assumption that all clusters would be about the same size.

It's remarkable that it proved to be correct.

And this standard cluster radius is known today as "The Abell Radius".

And second, those 50 plus galaxies have to be a certain brightness.

Of course it was a rough estimate, but looking at galaxies' brightness was a good way to distinguish between clusters that were nearby and those that were more distant.

Conversation 2

Listen to a conversation between a student and a university activities coordinator.

I understand your problem, but the upper level of the Student Center isn't available for the time being.

But my dance group has a performance coming up.

I've been talking with people all day long who are in the exact same situation.

There are at least a dozen dance and drama groups on campus, and they are all scrambling for rehearsal space right now.

But I made this reservation last June, before leaving for the summer.

No one said anything about construction.

That's because no one knew that the remodeling was gonna run over into the beginning of the school year.

The builders are just way behind schedule.

For a while, we weren't even sure that the dining hall on the lower level would be ready for the start of the semester.

So, it could've been a lot worse.

So when will...?

The whole upper level will be ready in six weeks.

The rehearsal rooms, the game room, the computer center.

Six weeks!

That's not gonna help me.

Our performance is in five weeks.

Are you part of the program they plan for parents' weekend?

Yeah, the thing is we are a tap dancing group, and we need to practice on hard floors, preferably wood.

We can practice on carpet at first, but it's important for us to be able to hear our feet hit the floor.

Interesting, uh, because of the rhythm, huh?

Yeah, because the taping becomes part of the music.

So the floors are very important.

Exactly, and just about everywhere on campus has carpeting.

Well, there's always the stage at the student theatre.

Though it's a long shot, we can look at the schedule.There might be some odd hours free.

What about in town? Do you think the university could help us rent a rehearsal space in a commercial dance studio in town, given the situation?

That's not really my call.

I can reserve rehearsal and performance spaces on campus for you, but off campus...

So who would I talk to?

The dance department?

Look, let's check the theatre schedule first.

Lecture 3

Listen to part of the lecture in an environmental science class.

When you try to imagine a fungus, you'd probably picture a mushroom popping up out of the ground.

And think that's it.

But a fungus like that...most of it actually lives underground.

And fungi in general are often an important active component of the soil.

A fungus secretes enzymes into the soil, enzymes that break down, decompose organic material in the soil.

So the fungus can absorb this material and get nutrition.

But to me, what's most interesting about this process is how it may enable fungi to help clean up environmental pollution in the soil.

And that's thanks in part to a substance in their cell walls called Chitin.

Now a lot of people think fungi are related to plants, but they are not. Believe it or not, the only other place chitin is found in abundance is in the exoskeletons of insects, crabs and such.

So in this sense, fungi are more associated with insects than with any plant. Strange, huh?

And the chitin in the cell walls of a filamentous fungus...a filament, of course, is a long thread-like structure, cells joined end to end.

Filamentous fungi grow in soil and in decaying vegetation.

And as their name implies they exist as filaments.

And although regarded as microorganisms, filaments from a single fungus can fan out to occupy many square meters or even several square kilometers of forest floor.

Their vast surface area allows them to break down and take in huge amounts of nutrients, but beyond that, the filaments also pull out of the soil a great deal of the pollution that might be in there, especially heavy metals.

And here is where chitin comes in, like some other substances in fungal cell walls, chitin forms strong chemical bonds to heavy metals in the environment, in a process we call adsorption.

Now, don't confuse this with absorption, where a substance is absorbed into a cell, into the interior of a cell.

I mean, that is happening here too.

But adsorption means binding to the outer surface of the cell.

And a filamentous fungus can adsorb toxic heavy metals, bind them to the surface of its enormous network of filaments, and thereby detoxify a large soil ecosystem.

The heavy metals are still there, but instead of leaching into the water system and contaminating the water underground, large amounts of these metals may remain bound to the chitin, to the cell walls of filamentous fungi in the soil, and thus remain chemically inactive for as long as 30 years, perhaps longer.

In fact, we can actually use the cell walls of filamentous fungi as a filter, even after the fungi are dead.

For example, the pharmaceutical Industry grows filamentous fungi in large quantities in the lab, like to produce the antibiotic penicillin, the drug company grows the fungus penicillium, and after the penicillin is extracted, these dead penicillium filaments, we can use the chitin in their cell walls to make industrial filters to adsorb heavy metals.

We can put these filters into waste pipes from industrial processes, and use the filters to trap heavy metals, like mercury and zinc.

Later, we can chemically extract the heavy metals and reuse the filter over and over.

Now going back to the absorption of toxic metals into the body of the fungus, let's turn our attention to mushrooms.

Like other fungi, mushrooms can absorb large quantities of heavy metals.

In fact, they may contain up to two and a half times the concentration of toxic metals found in the soil they grow in. So mushrooms, at least what we see above ground...we can potentially harvest them and then once for all safely dispose of the pollutants contained within them.

In fact, to clean up, especially the groundwater system, permanently, harvesting mushrooms is probably the best way to go.

For some reason, this hasn't happened yet as far as I know, but I can easily envision cultivating mushrooms for the sole purpose of detoxifying a large underground ecosystem.

Lecture 4

Listen to part of a lecture in a marketing class.

And that wraps up our discussion of how the retail sector, uh, ways in which retail managers deal with customer complaints.

So let's shift now to the service sector, which markets not goods but services, intangibles like transportation, food service, career counseling...

Oh, there are literally hundreds of examples.

Service providers must, of course, constantly strive to meet customers' needs. But as in retail, there are instances of service failure in which the customer is dissatisfied, uh, perhaps to the point of not doing business with you anymore.

Some service failures are beyond an organization's control, like, uh, computer malfunction that leads to missed deadlines.

Other failures stem from process problems, like inadequate training for newly-hired employees.

Then there's human error.

Okay, imagine you manage a car rental agency.

A customer calls in a reservation, but your employee marks down the wrong date.

So your customer arrives and guess what, the size car he reserved isn't available. But your customer is less concerned about the source of the failure than the solution: what you do about it; what sort of compensation; what service recovery you give.

So if you are in the service industry, as a marketer, you always need some kind of service recovery plan.

Your plan must be in place before a failure occurs and it must also be communicated promptly to everyone in your organization who deals with customers so they'll know what to do.

Service recovery encompasses all the actions taken to get a disappointed customer back to, uh, well, back to a state of satisfaction.

So if your car rental agency couldn't provide the size car your customer wanted, but your policy is to provide a roomier car for the same price.

Your customer would probably be happy, might even restore his faith in your company.

Research has in fact identified service recovery as a significant determinant of customer loyalty.

I see what you mean.

Every year, my family goes on vacation together.

And a few summers ago, when we were in Chicago, it was really really hot. And guess what, the hotel's air conditioning broke and everyone was complaining.

4 .What the hotel did...they actually didn't charge anybody for that weekend.

5 .But the funny thing is that even though we had that horrible experience at that hotel, because they were so quick to appease us, we usually stay at that same hotel every time we go to Chicago.

Great example!

So in this case that hotel chain might consider itself the beneficiary of the so-called service recovery paradox.

Um, the paradox basically implies that customers who experience a service failure, well, they could potentially be made more loyal than customers who were satisfied in the first place if an equitable recovery occurred after the failure.

Yes, Ben?

Wait a minute.

If a good service recovery creates more loyalty than, um, if things went smoothly from the get-go1 , why don't companies like make mistakes on purpose so?

So you could implement a recovery plan that leave your customers delighted as opposed to merely satisfied?

Look, it;s always better to do things right the first time 'cause how how can you know that the paradox will hold true in every situation?

Plus, it's hard to predict if a good service recovery will overcome the negative effect of a service failure, and what about all those failures that never come to your attention?

Because statistically about 50 percent of the customers don't complain about service failures, at least not to the service provider. But negative word of mouth, now, that got worse implications for your business.

Also, you'd have to pay your employees to execute the service a second time. Typically, a service recovery is gonna involve some kind of compensation, right? So it is gonna cost your company some money that you are going have to account for in your budget.

I've actually been researching some of these issues myself 'cause what we need is a deeper understanding of customers' thought processes and their reactions to service recoveries.

How do consumers form expectations?

How do they react to different service recovery tactics?

Can we predict how any given customer will react to a given service failure?

People's expectations, their priorities vary.

Like uh, if I am in a hurry, and the French fries I ordered at a fast food restauran aren't piping hot2,1 might not complain 'cause I got them fast.

But If I am not in a hurry, I might return the fries even if I had to wait for a fresh batch.