Listening

Conversation 1

Student: Hi professor, could I come in?

Professor: Of Course. How is your preparation for the portfolio?

Student: Actually this is why I am coming here today. I am here to ask you about some advice.

Professor: I have seen it and I think it was quite amazing.

Student: Oh thanks for the compliment! I kind of trying to combine music and art together, you know…to create a new form. I really want to do something new.

Professor: Yes I noticed it. Why don’t you keep doing research on the project you are doing now? I guess it will help you to apply to art schools.

Student: I will, but now I am quite confused about the final paper. Can I write something about my project?

Professor: Oh actually I would like you to do a summary about what we mentioned in the class. Edward Monte…

Student: You mean a review?

Professor: Not exactly, just a summary of his life and work.

Student: That is not hard I guess.

Professor: You can also write things what we discussed in the class. It is your option. I will give you some detail in the next class.

Student: OK. Thank you professor. Well…back to me portfolio, do you think I need to add something?

Professor: Yes, maybe more conception. You can come back when you finish it.

Student：Thank You！

Lecture 1

The extreme Arctic climate makes the region a forbidding place to travel and a challenging place to live. Even so, people have found ways to explore and live in the Arctic. Indigenous peoples have lived in the Arctic for thousands of years. Explorers, adventurers, and researchers have also ventured into the Arctic to explore its unique environment and geography.

Residents of the Arctic include a number of indigenous groups as well as more recent arrivals from more southern latitudes. In total, only about 4 million people live in the Arctic worldwide, and in most countries indigenous people make up a minority of the Arctic population.

Archaeologists and anthropologists now believe that people have lived in the Arctic for as much as twenty thousand years. The Inuit in Canada and Greenland, and the Yu'pik, Iñupiat, and Athabascan in Alaska, are just a few of the groups that are native to the Arctic. Traditionally, Arctic native peoples lived primarily from hunting, fishing, herding, and gathering wild plants for food, although some people also practice farming, particularly in Greenland. Northern people found many different ways to adapt to the harsh Arctic climate, developing warm dwellings and clothing to protect them from frigid weather. They also learned how to predict the weather and navigate in boats and on sea ice. Many Arctic people now live much like their neighbors to the south, with modern homes and appliances. Nonetheless, there is an active movement among indigenous people in the Arctic to pass on traditional knowledge and skills, such as hunting, fishing, herding, and native languages, to the younger generation.

Arctic people today face many changes to their homes and environment. Climate change is causing sea ice to melt and permafrost to thaw, threatening coastal villages with bigger storms and erosion. And the declining sea ice means that the Arctic Ocean could open up for commercial shipping or tourist cruises.

Lecture 2

The deep sea is cold, dark and under enormous pressure and the fishes that live there have adapted in strange and wonderful ways to this environment.

Many deep sea creatures give out blue light, called bioluminescence, but the stoplight loosejaw is unusual as it emits red light as well. This is invisible to both its prey and its predators, and probably acts like a torch, to search out shrimps and small fishes. It may also be used to communicate with other stoplight loosejaws.

The range of animals that live on the deep seabed has only recently been uncovered. They may live thousands of metres down, but they are as diverse as the inhabitants of a tropical rainforest or coral reef. Here are some of them.

The oarfish has a flattened, snake-like body that grows up to almost 10m long. It has a bright red dorsal fin and a crest of long stiff rods, or fin-rays, on the top of its head.

This strange and harmless fish is seen occasionally at the surface and may even be washed on to the shore. Because we see it so rarely, little is known about the oarfish's lifestyle. Its stomach contents reveal that it feeds mainly on tiny animals that drift through the water.

Oarfish occasionally appear around Britain and one was caught by an angler in Yorkshire a few years ago. Sadly it was eaten before the Natural History Museum could get to it.

There may be giants in the deep sea that we do not yet know about. In 1976, American scientists working in the Pacific hauled aboard a shark 4.5m long, previously unknown to science. If such a large and relatively shallow-living fish could remain totally unknown for so long then the deep ocean may still hold many surprises.

Conversation 2

Student：Hi, I kind of lost my ID card, I am really in a mess now. I was told that you can help me with this.

Teacher: ID card? I am sorry but I think you are coming to a wrong place. You can go downstairs. They will help you.

Student: Well…ehh…OK. I also lost my bike actually. I put it outside the dorm in March…I think it has been taken away by school.

Teacher: Now is September. Why you wait so long to get it?

Student: I just…well I have been busy… I…

Teacher: I can be quite sure that we have no methods to find it anymore.

Student: What? I cannot believe it. You should keep it until I get it don’t you think so?

Teacher: You have to know that we don’t run warehouse here. We normally clean it every summer vacation.

Student: So what could I do now? You cannot treat my stuff as garbage.

Teacher: I am sorry but rules are rules.

Student: I can’t believe it I…

Teacher: How new is your bike?

Student: It is not brand new but it was in a very good condition.

Teacher: It might already belong to somebody who needs it. I am sorry but there is nothing I can do for the moment.

Lecture 3

Galaxies are the basic unit of cosmology. They contain stars, gas, dust and alot of dark matter. They are the only `signposts' from here to the edge of the Universe and contain the fossil clues to this earlier time.

The physics of galaxy formation is complicated because it deals with the dynamics of stars, thermodynamics of gas and energy production of stars. For example, stars form from gas clouds, but new stars heat these clouds, which dissipates them and stops the formation of other stars. After recombination, density enhancements either grew or dispersed. According to our hybrid top-down/bottom-up scenario, an assortment of enhancements formed of various sizes. Small, dense ones collapsed first, large ones formed slower and fragmented as they collapsed.

As the gas in the protogalaxy loses energy, its density goes up. Gas clouds form and move around in the protogalaxy on orbits. When two clouds collide, the gas is compressed into a shock front.

The first stars in a galaxy form in this manner. With the production of its first photons by thermonuclear fusion, the galaxy becomes a primeval galaxy.

After their formation, galaxies can still change their appearance and star formation rates by interactions with other galaxies. Galaxies orbit each on in clusters. Those orbits can sometimes cause two galaxies to pass quite close to each other to produce interesting results.

Solid objects, like planets, can pass near each other with no visible effects. However, galaxies are not solid, and can undergo inelastic collisions, which means some of the energy of the collision is transferred internally to the stars and gas in each galaxy.

Lecture 4

Leonardo was notorious for incorporating landscapes behind his subjects in the foreground, utilizing dramatic chiaroscuro and rugged terrain, possibly as psychological cues. As the Renaissance revived the classical ideals, naturalistic elements like scenery and landscape sparked a new interest in studying Nature and its importance.

Derivative of the Dutch word, idealized landscapes truly began in the Netherlands, the location of a steadily growing population of Protestants that wanted a secular option to the contemporary religious subject-matter. Aelbert Cuyp was one of the most poetic, drawing from his surroundings to paint bright and imaginative scenes. By the seventeenth century, the landscape was perfected, displaying an idealized, classical harmony where Nature was balanced and serene, evoking a classical simplicity. Landscapes were still not the highest form of painting recognized by the royal academies, but they remained popular, steadily growing in importance. Finally, late in the eighteenth century, the Academy recognized landscapes as historic and important, documenting nature as an educational study.

By the late nineteenth century, some of the world’s most beloved landscapes were being painted by artists like Van Gogh and Monet, practicing the technique of en plein air, or painting outdoors. Now that pre-mixed boxed paints were readily available, the artists could travel outdoors to paint amids a more natural setting, further developing the quickly changing social customs and the idea of the weekend. The bourgeoisie could take the train to the countryside on the weekends, escaping the drab of the city. Moments like these were captured by the Impressionists and their contemporaries, documenting this new lifestyle in paintings of landscapes and social scenes. Their modern masterpieces broke ground for today’s contemporary landscape artists.