Section 2

You will hear a university administrator telling a group of new students about the central campus buildings and the facilities they provide.

Welcome, everyone, to the Brandon complex, the geographical and, we could say, spiritual heart of this university. This is basically where everyone eats too, as you can see by looking around. There are many different cuisines here: Chinese, Indian, and Middle-Eastern, plus the usual fare of a local type, all in that corner oyer there.

We have many shops here too, but the biggest is Wilsons, right there, providing clothing and hardware. That’s next to all the restaurants. Now, on the opposite side of Wilsons we have three shops. The one in the corner there, closest to the restaurants, is for DVDs. Yes, the DVDs arc cheap and affordable, and you can also rent DVD players as well.

Moving on, in the corner directly opposite Wilsons is the Student Union Office. Incidentally, you are all encouraged to join the student union, as a student union card gives you many benefits, including discounts on basically everything you can buy here at the Brandon complex.

Outside this complex, on the other side of the road you can just see it from here, in fact is a building that we call by the rather unusual name, the H-Building. Next to this, on the other side of some trees, along the main road, is the Engineering Institute, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the Brandon complex. One last thing is that just outside this door, near us here, you can see a grassy oval patch. Well, that’s the playing field for what we simply call the Fitness Room, which is alongside. So, you can put on some calories here at the restaurants, and then burn them off at the Fitness Room afterwards.

Oh. I forgot to mention this shop right here, in the middle, beside the Student Union. It’s the bookshop, and as you can sec, it’s always busy, always popular. You can buy newspapers, magazines, and stationery there, plus a few clothing items as well, just as you can at Wilsons. Why don’t you go and take a: look right now?

Now, I’d like to tell you a bit more about one of the buildings here; namely, the H-Building. Despite its bland name, you might be interested in what goes on there. It is our main recreational centre, with halls, offices, and space available for a variety of activities, mostly for those who want to get fit. For example, if you’re interested in yoga, you’re in luck, since four days a week there are free yoga classes. They have several levels, so if you’re a beginner, you’d have to start with that. You can check the schedules on the wall there. Yoga used to be at night, but now it’s in the mornings, but not on Wednesdays.

Along those same lines, there’s aerobic dancing in the afternoon. This shares the same room as the badminton games, which are on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The aerobics are on the alternate days: Tuesdays and Thursdays, and it’s not restricted at all. Everyone is welcome to join, although the instructor may divide you up, of course, according to ability.

And, just to show how diverse the H-Building is, there’s even some spiritual solace available there inside the multi-denominational prayer centre, with individual booths and a variety of holy scriptures and texts available to read, from all the major religions of the world. That’s open all day over the weekend, but not at night time, when the rooms are for private booking. Finally, tor those of you of a cerebral nature, the university chess club operates at night. That’s open from 8 pm every... ah... is it Wednesday? Or Monday? No, sorry, Friday, and I think it closes at about 11.30 pm. So, there’s something for everyone in the H-Building.

Section 3

You will hear two students, Dylan and Emily, discussing a presentation which they will have to make.

Dylan: Okay Emily, as you know, we’ve got to do this presentation together.

Emily: I know. I’m a little bit nervous about it. Standing up in front of all those people. And what if the

presentation fails. What if...

Dylan: Don’t worry. I’ve been reading a book about giving effective presentations. It’s not that hard, but the way to do it is certainly not always obvious, either. For example, do you know what the most important part of a presentation is?

Emily: The final summary, I guess.

Dylan: The opposite: the first minute, in fact. The theory says that that first minute is when you win or lose the audience. If you lose them at that point, you’ll probably never get them back. So that’s why you need a hook.

Emily: A hook? You mean, like when you catch fish?

Dylan: Yes. I mean, not exactly, but yes - we want to catch the audience, right? So we need to start in a way which wakes them up, gets them interested, and makes them watch us.

Emily: I see.

Dylan: Basically, no matter how good our presentation is, if the message doesn’t get across, the presentation fails. So, we need to give a fact which really amazes them, or an interesting story, or pose a dilemma which makes them think - something they can really puzzle over. It’s better if this is related to the subject, of course - something to do with management, in our case.

Emily: So that’s the hook?

Dylan: That’s right. From then on, we’ll just follow the basic advice.

Emily: Like what?

Dylan: Like... talk to your audience - you know, as equals. Don’t talk down to them, or up to them. They’re just the same as us, right?

Emily: You’re right, you know. Some of the best presentations I’ve ever seen sounded just like conversations.

Dylan: Exactly. And what else made them good?

Emily: Well, the speakers... sort of... involved me in the topic and issues under discussion, by asking questions, by... ah... referring to me - y’know, by saying ‘you’ and, well, basically, they were interesting.

Dylan: And they’re exactly the tips we’ll follow, too. It should be fine.

Dylan: Emily, I think this will be a fine presentation, but how are we going to divide it up? For example, who’s going to open it? You or me?

Emily: Well, I think you have a very natural style, so you should start. This talk has five main parts, so you can introduce it, and then do Part One.

Dylan: That’s the historical context, or background to the issue.

Emily: Yes, then I’ll do Part Two - about current views. You do Part Three, and I’ll do Part Four, leaving both of us to handle the Question Time.

Dylan: I’m okay with that. In Part One, I’ll probably speak at length about Hoffman’s theory, about management styles, and compare differences in culture in relation to the style of management used.

Emily: That sounds good. Those differences are important, and certainly relevant to the current times. Hoffman makes some excellent points, too, on this issue. That’s why I’ll follow up with present day perspectives and viewpoints on this, such as the problems facing today’s managers in the complex multicultural workplace, where basically one can no longer assume one is dealing with a single culture in the workplace, but actually a multi-culture.

Dylan: That sounds good also. Then I’ll take over, discussing the implications and problems of this.

Emily: I suppose you’ll look at the Pluralist movement?

Dylan: Yeah, I was thinking about that, but then I changed my mind. I’ve decided I’ll look at the Productive Diversity argument. It’s more interesting anyway, so I’ll go with that.

Emily: Then I’ll tell everyone what we’ve decided is the best business practice, or what is most likely to work in midst situations, which is basically ignoring Pluralism and Productive Diversity, and linking everything back to Cotter’s Theory of Human Universals.

Dylan: Yes, the theory that argues modern management should target the universals of human nature, Right, and that leaves both of us to field questions at the end.

Emily: Are there any questions we can predict, so that we have some good answers ready? About resolving industrial disputes, for example.

Dylan: Well, I’d say that industrial democracy usually surprises people, so we should expect a lot of questions about that.

Emily: Yes, the theory is that it increases productivity, and reduces industrial delays.

Dylan: And results in better decision-making, but that’s all theory. Most people would think that industrial democracy is just about unworkable in practice, so let’s be ready to explore that issue in some depth, as well as any other related topics, okay?

Emily: Okay.

Section 4

You will hear a lecturer discussing the possibility of creating nuclear fusion.

We look at the sun - a huge ball streaming out essentially limitless energy into space - and we think about how we need that energy here on Earth. Our oil reserves are running out, coal-burning causes much pollution, and nuclear energy has many dangers. But where does the sun itself get its energy? The answer is that the sun makes it using fusion, or, more specifically, in a "hydrogen fusion process’.There is no pollution, no radioactivity, no waste products, and we have plenty of hydrogen. So, hydrogen fusion seems the perfect answer to our energy needs, and scientists have long attempted to achieve it here on Earth.

So, what happens during this process? The first step is to make two light atomic particles approach. In the case of our sun, these are hydrogen particles - the lightest and also the easiest to deal with. However, the problem is that the nuclei of atoms have electric fields, and fusion between these particles is opposed by their similar electric charge. They most naturally repel each other, and the nuclei of all elements are exactly the same in this respect. Thus, in order to overcome this repulsion and force them together, in the second step, the particles are heated. The trouble is... you need a lot of heat - incredible temperatures - of the sort only seen on the surface of the sun. This is many millions of degrees, far higher than the melting point of any known material. Still, the concept is simple: the hot, wildly moving particles, which are now called ‘plasma’, will crash into each other, resulting in the third step, the fusion into helium, which releases energy, and begins a self-sustained process.

So, we know how fusion works, thus, the big question is, can we create it here on Earth? We actually have the technology to superheat hydrogen into plasma, but no container on Earth can deal with those temperatures. Thus, we need to coniine this superheated material so that it doesn’t touch anything, for that, we need a special reactor, and most research has focused on an apparatus known as a Tokamak system. That’s T-O-K-A-M-A-K, an acronym from some Russian words meaning ‘toroidal chamber with magnetic field’. It’s an apt name, since a very powerful magnetic field is used to confine and suspend the superhot plasma in the air, so that it doesn’t touch anything. This is possible only because this plasma has an electric charge, which interacts with the magnetic field. Of course, the walls of the fusion vessel will still gel hot -- very hot, and to avoid being melted, they must be cooled with a cryogenic system to intensely low temperatures. But now, we are faced with the second problem. If we are to draw power from this system, the reaction must be continuous and controllable; however, when fusion begins, (he plasma becomes unstable, and at these temperatures, that is a very serious situation. If we lose control, a disaster could result.

Despite the obstacles, in 2010, a European device managed some success, but needed far more power to generate the fusion reaction than that produced from the fusion itself. Obviously then, it was not useful as a power source. More to the point, this system could only sustain a fusion reaction for a fraction of a second, yet, to self-sustain, the fusion needs to run for at least 10 seconds. And the future looks... bleak! Unfortunately, most scientists predict that many decades will have to pass before fusion power can become a practical reality.