AS1a Listening Recs

Listening practice suggestions for your weekly AS1a academic listening homework.

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Overview

Britain’s legal profession is renowned the world over for its skill and independence. The cab rank rule governs barristers, ie they are obliged to accept the next case that presents itself, thereby ensuring that even the most unpopular of defendants has a representative, and that the barrister is not identified with the client’s cause. This is a vital ingredient of the Rule of Law. Should there be self regulation or should the profession be regulated by external bodies composed of lay members? Through the centuries the lawyers, although unpopular, have maintained their professional standards and their own systems of governance and education. What difference will the Legal Services Act 2007 make, and should we continue to have a divided profession, barristers and solicitors?

This lecture is part of a series by Baroness Deech of Cumnor.

Downloads, transcript and PowerPoint available here.

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Overview

It has been claimed that economics is just a branch of psychology. Certainly movements on the stock market reflect human greed and fears. The desire to acquire wealth is a major driving force in human behaviour and our relationship with money says much about who we are. If money doesn't necessarily make us happy it does powerfully affect our emotions and is a factor in many psychological disorders ranging from anxiety and depression to hoarding and kleptomania.

Transcript and PowerPoint available here.

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Is Man Just Another Animal?

Overview

Many people agree with Gilbert and Sullivan that Darwinian man, though well behaved is nothing but a monkey shaved. The recent discovery that we share around 95% of our DNA sequence with our closest relative suggests that there may be some truth in that statement. A closer look shows that almost all the physical changes that have taken place in our bodies since the split from our common ancestor seven million years ago involve loss - we are bald, with weak muscles, and lack characteristics found in our relatives. Most remarkable, we are the only creature unable to survive on raw food. Eatan uncooked diet and in the end you will die. Our guts have been so reduced and our digestive enzymes so enfeebled that we depend on an external stomach, a frying pan or microwave, to stay alive. In just one organ, the brain, we have gained in comparison to the chimpanzee; and its improvements are striking indeed.

This lecture will explore why mankind is much more than just another animal.

Speaker: Professor Steve Jones: Emeritus Professor of Genetics at University College London and an author of several popular science books. He is one of the world's top six experts on the genetics of snails (and the other five agree) and has also studied the genetics and evolution of fruit flies and humans. 

Transcript, video/audio download and lecture PowerPoint available here.

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Visit Original Link

Scientific Horizons

Professor Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, delievers the first of 4 lectures as part of the annual Reith Lectures series on the BBC. In this first lecture, he explores the challenges facing science in the 21st century

Download the next lectures here:

Lecture 2: explores how Earth is coming under increasing strain from climate change, population explosion and food shortages and questions how we can use science to help us solve this crisis.

Lecture 3: says there are things that will always lie beyond our sphere of comprehension and we should accept the limits to our knowledge

Lecture 4: explores how fast the world is moving in the 21st Century and how the internet and other technologies have transformed our lives.

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Chemistry

Lecture 1/100: Introduction to the Atom

The first in a 100 part series introducing the fundamentals of Chemistry.

Credits: lecturer: Salman Khan, the Khan Academy

To see other lectures in this series, click here.

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Who on Earth are we? is a 12 part audio series about culture and how it affects us. It explores some of the major differences between cultures and looks at what happens when people from different cultures meet and communicate. The series is presented by Marc Beeby.

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A 12 part audio series from the BBC for prospective international students in the UK.

'I'm Angelica Baschiera from Italy and I'm doing my post-graduate studies in the UK in London'.

'I'm Mohammed from Oman. I'm going to study in Leicester University, Communications and Media'.

'My name is Jose Arturo. I'm from Mexico and here in London I'm making my PhD in African History at the School of Oriental and African Studies'. If like those students you’re attending or preparing to attend an English-speaking university, or simply want to improve your listening skills, this series is for you. It’s about learning to listen, and listening to learn.

The series, first broadcast in 2001, was produced by Gary Stevens and presented by Susan Fearn.  

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3 Simple Ways to Time Travel (& 3 Complicated Ones)

Nice to see that I’m not the only one who realizes we are all time traveling, all the time, forward at one second per second. Luckily, Henry from minutephysics and Aatish Bhatia came up with some other, more interesting ways we can time travel, too.

Plus a few ways that we can’t. Not yet, anyway.

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Henry (the creator of Minute Physics) is sitting next to me as I reblog this.

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Is Math a Feature of the Universe or a Feature of Human Creation? Video description: Math is invisible. Unlike Physics, Chemistry and Biology, we can't see it, smell it or even directly observe it in the universe. And so that has made a lot of really smart people ask, does it actually even EXIST?!?!

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Video description: Zombies are EVERYWHERE!! Wait, don't panic- we mean in pop culture, not outside your window. But why is that? Bad guys and monsters seem to go through phases: one decade there's a dozen movies about aliens, ten years later it's vampires. And right now it's zombies. And monsters don't pop up for no reason at all. There must be something that makes us fixate on one antagonistic trope; some qualities they hold that echo a deeper cultural fear... So what are we afraid of now? It might just be technology. Watch the episode and find out!

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A series of lectures from the Department of Landscape at the University of Sheffield. Well worth a listen if you are going into landscape architecture or urban planning. There are lectures relevant to you if you follow the link above.

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Physics for Future Presidents Lecture 1/24: Atoms and Heat Physics 10: Physics for Future Presidents. Spring 2006. Professor Richard A. Muller. The most interesting and important topics in physics, stressing conceptual understanding rather than math, with applications to current events. Topics covered may vary and may include energy and conservation, radioactivity, nuclear physics, the Theory of Relativity, lasers, explosions, earthquakes, superconductors, and quantum physics. Credits: lecturer:Professor Richard A. Muller, producers:Educational Technology Services To see other lectures in this series, click here

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Critical Reasoning for Beginners Part 1: The Nature of Arguments The first in a series of six lectures on critical thinking from the University of Oxford. Very useful for prospective university students. The course summary follows... Are you confident you can reason clearly? Are you able to convince others of your point of view? Are you able to give plausible reasons for believing what you believe? Do you sometimes read arguments in the newspapers, hear them on the television, or in the pub and wish you knew how to confidently evaluate them? In this six-part course, you will learn all about arguments, how to identify them, how to evaluate them, and how not to mistake bad arguments for good. Such skills are invaluable if you are concerned about the truth of your beliefs, and the cogency of your arguments. For the rest of the lectures in this series, click here.

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Human Rights and Institutions Former Irish president and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson delivers this lecture to students at Columbia University.

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Click on the title above to view the video. Read on for a description. The average number of Google searches per day has grown from 9,800 in 1998 to over 4.7 trillion today.1 This may not be surprising, since we’ve all come to appreciate the thrill of instant information. But while it’s certainly convenient to have the sum of all knowledge at our fingertips, studies show that the “Google effect” is changing the way we think. In a 2011 experiment published in Science Magazine, college students remembered less information when they knew they could easily access it later on the computer.2 With 49% of Americans now toting around Google on their smart phones, researchers concluded that the effect is the same. We’re relying on Google to store knowledge long-term, instead of our own brains.3 Neuroimaging of frequent Internet users shows twice as much activity in the short term memory as sporadic users during online tasks.4 Basically, our brain is learning to disregard information found online, and this connection becomes stronger every time we experience it. So the more we use Google, the less likely we are to retain what we see. Our brains use information stored in the long-term memory to facilitate critical thinking. We need these unique memories to understand and interact with the world around us. If we rely on Google to store our knowledge, we may be losing an important part of our identity. Click here for more videos from the Electives series on Academic Earth

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Click on the title above to watch the video. Read on for a description. We all behave differently when alone. Anonymity frees us from a perceived obligation to act in accordance with certain social norms. For example, most people refrain from picking their nose in public, but dig with abandon when alone. This isn’t revelatory – fear of judgment is a powerful motivator and is well documented by psychologists.1 So, while most of our anonymous behavior is relatively benign, what happens when it isn’t? In 1981, Leon Mann published a study documenting the phenomenon of suicide baiting.2 Studying the circumstances surrounding 21 public suicide attempts, Mann observed that in 10 cases victims were jeered and baited to, “jump!” He identified several contributing factors to this anti-social behavior including membership in a large crowd, the cover of night, and relative distance from the victim – all hallmarks of anonymity. The irony here is that while a focused set of watchful eyes keeps us in check, the distracted eyes of many don’t. Anonymity makes all the difference, and unfortunately, this frees some to partake in some pretty egregious behavior. This is particularly true online. We’re 20 years into the experiment of the World Wide Web, and we can clearly see how Internet anonymity plays out across social media, chat rooms, and comment sections. Usually just a nuisance, anonymous troublemakers, known as trolls, can be dangerous when they go after the vulnerable. In an effort to better understand what makes them tick, psychologists are starting to take a closer look at the psychology of the Internet troll. Click here for more in the Electives series from Academic Earth.

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Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow Guy Kawasaki thinks that companies like Nordstrom, Audi, and Nike make the world a better place. His advice: don't start a business because you think that's what's hot. You should study and do what you love, he says. He can't promise you that the money will come, he does promise that if you start a company simply for the money, you will probably end up miserable.