TPO 6 Conversation 1
Narrator
Listen to a conversation between a student and an employee in the university’s career services office.
Student
Hi, do you have a minute?
Employee
Sure, how can I help you?
Student
I have a couple of questions about the career fair next week.
Employee
OK, shoot.
Student
Um ...well, are seniors the only ones who can go? I mean, you know, they are finishing school this year and getting their degrees and everything. And, well, it seems like businesses would wanna talk to them and not first year students like me.
Employee
No, no, the career fair is opened to all our students and we encourage anyone who’s interested to go check it out.
Student
Well, that’s good to know.
Employee
You’ve seen the flyers and posters around campus, I assume.
Student
Sure, can’t miss them. I mean, they all say where and when the fair is, just not who should attend.
Employee
Actually they do, but it’s in the small print. Uh, we should probably make that part easier to reach, shouldn’t we? I’ll make a note of that right now. So, do you have any other questions?
Student
Yes, actually I do now. Um ...since I’d only be going to familiarize myself with the process, you know, check it out, I was wondering if there is anything you recommend that I do to prepare.
Employee
That’s actually a very good question. Well, as you know, the career fair is generally an opportunity for local businesses to recruit new employees, and for soon-to-be graduates to have interviews with several companies they might be interested in working for. Now, in your case, even though you wouldn’t be looking for employment right now, it still wouldn’t hurt for you to prepare much like you would if you were looking for a job.
Student
You mean, like get my resume together and wear a suit?
Employee
That’s a given. I was thinking more along the lines of doing some research.
The flyers and posters list all the businesses that are sending representatives to the career fair. Um ...what’s your major urge you to have one yet?
Student
Well, I haven’t declared a major yet, but I’m strongly considering accounting.
See, that’s part of the reason I wanna go to the fair, to help me decide if that’s what I really want to study.
Employee
That’s very wise. Well, I suggest that you get on the computer and learn more about the accounting companies in particular that would be attending. You can learn a lot about companies from their internet websites. Then prepare a list of questions.
Student
Questions, hmm… so, in a way, I’ll be interviewing them?
Employee
That’s one way of looking at it. Think about it for a second. What do you want to know about working for an accounting firm?
Student
Well, there is the job itself, and salary of course, and working conditions, I mean, would I have an office, or would I work in a big room with a zillion other employees, and…and maybe about opportunities for advancement.
Employee
See? Those’re all important things to know. After you do some research, you’ll be able to tailor your questions to the particular company you are talking to.
Student
Wow, I’m glad I came by here. So, it looks like I’ve got some work to do.
Employee
And if you plan on attending future career fairs, I recommend you sign up for one of our interview workshops.
Student
I’ll do that.TPO 6 Lecture 1 Economics
Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in an economics class.
Professor
Now when I mention the terms “boom and bust”, what is that going to mind?
Student
The dotcom crash of the ‘90s.
Professor
Ok. The boom in the late 1990s when all those new Internet companies sprung up and then sold for huge amounts of money. Then the bust around 2000…2001 when many of those same Internet companies went out of business.
Of course, booms aren’t always followed by busts. We’ve certainly seen times when local economies expanded rapidly for a while and then went back to a normal pace of growth. But, there’s a type of rapid expansion, what might be called the hysterical or irrational boom that pretty much always leads to a bust.
See, people often create and intensify a boom when they get carried away by some new industry that seems like it will make them lots of money fast. You’d think that by the 90s, people would have learned from the past. If they did, well, look at tulips.
Student
Tulips? You mean like the flower?
Professor
Exactly. For instance, do you have any idea where tulips are from? Originally I mean.
Student
Well, the Netherlands, right?
Professor
That’s what most people think, but no. They are not native to the Netherlands, or even Europe. Tulips actually hail from an area that Chinese call the Celestial
Mountains in Central Asia. A very remote mountainous region. It was Turkish nomads who first discovered tulips and spread them slowly westward. Now, around the 16th century, Europeans were traveling to Istanbul and Turkey as merchants and diplomats. And the Turks often gave the Europeans tulip bulbs as gifts which they would carry home with them. For the Europeans, tulips were totally unheard of. Er…a great novelty. The first bulb to show up in the Netherlands, the merchant who received them roasted and ate them. He thought they were kind of onion.
It turns out that the Netherlands was an ideal country for growing tulips. It had the right kind of sandy soil for one thing, but also, it was a wealthy nation with a growing economy, willing to spend lots of money on new exotic things. Plus, the Dutch had a history of gardening. Wealthy people would compete, spending enormous amounts of money to buy the rarest flowers for their gardens.
Soon tulips were beginning to show up in different colors as growers tried to breed them specifically for colors which would make them even more valuable.
But they were never completely sure what they would get. Some of the most priced tulips were white with purple stricks, or red with yellow stricks on the paddles, even a dark purple tulip that was very much priced. What happened then was a craze for these specialized tulips. We called that craze “tulip mania”.
So, here we’ve got all the conditions for an irrational boom：a prospering economy, so more people had more disposable income-money to spend on luxuries, but they weren’t experienced at investing their new wealth. Then along comes a thrilling commodity. Sure the first specimens were just played right in tulips, but they could be bred into some extraordinary variations, like that dark purple tulip. And finally, you have an unregulated market place, no government constrains, where price could explode. And explode they did, starting in the 1630s. There was always much more demand for tulips than supply. Tulips didn’t bloom frequently like roses. Tulips bloomed once in the early spring. And that was it for the year. Eventually, specially-bred multi-colored tulips became so valuable, well, according to records, one tulip bulb was worth 24 tons of wheat, or thousand pounds of cheese. One particular tulip bulb was sold and exchanged for a small sheep. In other words, tulips were literally worth their weight in gold. As demand grew, people began selling promissory notes guaranteeing the future delivery of priced tulip bulbs. The buyers of these pieces of paper would resell the notes and mark up prices. These promissory notes kept changing hands from buyer to buyer until the tulip was ready for delivery. But it was all pure speculation because as I said, there was no way to know if the bulb was really going to produce the variety, the color that was promised. But that didn’t matter to the owner of the note. The owner only cared about having that piece of paper so it could be traded later at a profit. And people were borrowing, mortgaging their homes in many cases to obtain those bits of paper because they were sure they’d find an easy way to make money.
So now, you’ve got all the ingredients for a huge bust. And bust it did, when one cold February morning in 1637, a group of bulb traders got together and discovered that suddenly there were no bidders. Nobody wanted to buy. Panic spread like wild fire and the tulip market collapsed totally.TPO 6 Lecture 2 Biology
Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in a biology class.
Professor
Ok, I have an interesting plant species to discuss with you today. Um…it’s a species of a very rare tree that grows in Australia, Eidothea hardeniana, but it’s better known as the Nightcap Oak. Now, it was discovered only very recently, just a few years ago. Um… it remained hidden for so long because it’s so rare. There are only about 200 of them in existence. They grow in a rain forest, in a mountain rage…range in the north part of New South Wales which is a…er… state in Australia. So just 200 individual trees in all.
Now another interesting thing about the Nightcap Oak is that it is…it represents…er…a very old type…er…kind of tree that grew a hundred million years ago. Um, we found fossils that old that bear remarkable resemblance to the tree. So, it’s a primitive tree. A…a living fossil you might say. It’s relic from earlier times and it has survived all these years without much change. And it…it’s probably a kind of tree from which other trees that grow in Australia today evolved. Just to give you an idea of what we are talking about. Here’s a picture of the leaves of the tree and its flowers. I don’t know how well you can see the flowers. They’re those little clusters sitting at the base of the leaves.
Okay, what have we tried to find out about the tree since we’ve discovered it? Hum…or how…why is…is it so rare? That’s one of the first questions. Um… how is it…um…h(huán)ow does it reproduce? This’s another question. Um, maybe those two questions are actually related. Jim?
Student
Hum …I don’t know. But I can imagine that…for instance, seed disposal might be a factor. I mean if the…er…you know, if the seeds cannot really disperse in the wild area, then, you know, the tree may not colonize new areas. It can’t spread from the area where it’s growing.
Professor
Right. That’s…that’s actually a very good answer. Um, of course, you might think there might not be any areas where the tree could spread into, er…because…um…well, it’s very specialized in terms of the habitat. But, that’s not really the case here. Um…the suitable habitat, that is, the actual rainforest is much larger than the few hectares where the Nightcap Oak grows.
Now this tree is a flowering tree as I showed you. Um…um…it produces a fruit, much like a plum. On the inci…inside there’s a seed with a hard shell. It…it appears that the shell has to crack open or break down somewhat to allow the seed to soak up water. You know, if the Nightcap Oak remains…if their seeds remain locked inside their shell, they will not germinate. Actually, the seeds…er…they don’t retain the power to germinate for very long, maybe two years. So there’s actually quite a short window of opportunity for the seed to germinate. So the shell somehow has to be broken down before this…um…germination ability expires. And…and then there’s a kind of rat that likes to feed on the seeds as well. So, given all these limitations, not many seeds that the tree produces will actually germinate. So this is a possible explanation for why the tree does not spread. It doesn’t necessarily explain how it became so rare, but it explains why it doesn’t increase.
OK, so it seems to be the case that the species, this Nightcap Oak is not very good at spreading. However, it seems, though we can’t be sure, that it’s very good at persisting as a population. Um…we…there’s some indications to suggest that the population of the Nightcap Oak has not declined over the last er…you know, many hundreds of years. So it’s stayed quite stable. It’s not a remnant of some huge population that is dwindled in last few hundred years for some reason. It’s not necessarily a species in retreat.
Ok, so it cannot spread very well, but it’s good at maintaining itself. It’s rare, but it’s not disappearing.
Ok, the next thing we might want to ask about the plant like that is what chances does it have to survive into the future. Let’s look at that.