OK, everybody, I’ll continue our discussion of woodwind instruments today . . . and this time, I’ll focus on the saxophone. This instrument was invented by a Belgian named Adolphe Sax in 1846. Uh, Sax began as an instrument maker, and . . . by the time he was twenty, he had already patented several innovations on existing traditional wind instruments. Well, after he invented the saxophone, he left Belgium for France because . . . he wasn’t really successful in his homeland. Actually, it was only after he left that the Belgians gave him any recognition, and I’d have to say this is a real pity for a man whose instrument would continue to be played down to our time. Anyhow . . . let’s take a closer look at the saxophone. Let me give you a general description before we discuss the different parts in turn. OK, saxophones are made of brass, but this doesn’t put it in the brass family of instruments. It’s a woodwind instrument, in fact. I want to point out that it’s not the brass that gives the saxophone its distinct sound. It’s more the part of the instrument that goes into the mouth, and which is very unique, by the way, and also the shape of saxophone’s body. See, when Sax began designing the saxophone, he may have fitted a clarinet mouthpiece to a large brass wind instrument called the ophicleide. This instrument was sort of a forerunner of the tuba. What was his purpose? Well, he may have been aiming for an instrument with a different tonality. See, although the saxophone has a clarinet mouthpiece, the shape of its body is somewhat conical, which tends to make its tone much more similar to that of the oboe than that of the clarinet. Of course, you might be thinking that with a clarinet mouthpiece, the sound produced would be similar to that of a clarinet, right? If you’ve ever heard a clarinet being played, well, it has this very liquid tone and its range runs from a very deep low to a high register. On the other hand, the oboe has a rather high and reedy sound . . . and with expert manipulation an oboe player can express a really wide range of emotions and moods. So . . . the saxophone is supposed to be easier to learn to play than other woodwind instruments because of its simple fingering system, but actually it requires a great deal of practice to produce the beautiful tone that the instrument is capable of making. Let me say something more about this fingering system. It’s actually based on a 180-year-old system developed for the flute. Have you heard of it, the, the Boehm System? Well, Boehm was frustrated by the fingering system of flutes of that time, so, in 1829, he designed a completely new system that allowed the musician to produce these incredibly complex and elaborate passages. This superior system was adopted for, I believe, every woodwind instrument, including the saxophone invented by Adolphe Sax.

So, how exactly do GPRs work? The explanation might’ve been confusing in the text I assigned you to read. Let me see if I can simplify it for you. Well, first, GPR radars are mounted on a small-wheeled cart that is hand-towed across the area being investigated. While this is happening, radar waves are transmitted into the ground. Now these radar waves boomerang off any surface they hit and send a return message in the form of reflected energy. If the radar waves “find” something, so to speak, such as, you know, a ground anomaly or a change in soil composition, the waves that are reflected are shorter. These shorter waves tell the archaeologist that there is something below the ground. The wave is captured by the GPR antenna and recorded on a storage device such as a laptop computer for later interpretation. When these many grid transactions are compiled, they yield a digitally mastered, threedimensional map of still uncovered surfaces and features. And after analyzing the data, archaeologists can decide whether to excavate or not. They can also figure out where to dig first. Now, that wasn’t too difficult, was it?

Now, I want to look at situations when GPR is extremely helpful for archaeologists. Um, first, if an archaeological site is complex and important, well, like the ones in Iraq . . . you know, sites that are likely to be excavated for many seasons . . . That’s because they’re pretty enormous in size, and the excavators aren’t always familiar with ancient structures. Um, one example is the dig in the Mesopotamian region, which has spanned six generations . . .

well, this is where geophysical methods like GPR can be most useful. GPRs are non-destructive and rapid, and they allow the archaeologist to set digging priorities based on survey findings. Now, second, in some sites . . . such as monuments and parks . . . GPR probably provides the only means of studying the site. You see, if archaeologists wanted to know what was under the Great Pyramids of Gaza or the Cathedral of Notre Dame, they couldn’t very well start drilling holes, now, could they? OK, a third feature of the GPR is its high resolution compared to other methods of surface radar. Resolution . . . that’s related to images, well . . . just bear in mind that resolution has to do with the number of pixels per square inch in a picture or computer-generated display. I hope everybody knows what a pixel is. It’s, you know, those little dots that make up a picture. So . . . the higher the resolution, the more dots or pixels there are, and this simply means the quality of the picture is sharper.

P: 

Well, that is what some companies seem to think. But remember, you want to prevent this thing from happening again. Alice mentioned it a while back. Quality control.The company has the quality control team investigate how those insects got into the potato chips in the first place, and then redesign the manufacturing process to ensure that in the future, chips aren’t contaminated by insects. The administration revises its policy about plant sanitation. And to make sure the public knows what the company is doing, the public relations people let consumers know about the new policy and quality control procedures in a press release. This assures consumers that you’re actually doing something about the problem. But that’s not all. The company can take it one step further. Put yourself in the company’s position. How would you get customers to start buying your products again?

S2: 

Um, how about some sort of special discount on its products, maybe even give stuff away for free? Something to create goodwill among customers.

P: 

There you go! Special promotions are a great way to show that the company’s in touch with its customers and is willing to take that additional step to please them. Promotions can be done in all kinds of ways – going back to our potato chip example, the company could give away free chips to loyal customers . . . or maybe buy one, get one free, that sort of thing. So, when you put all these things together – the apology, the recall, the quality control checks and policy changes, and the special promotions, well, this is crisis management in its totality. Would these steps help the company in the end? I’m willing to bet that within a year of initiating crisis management, the company’s profits would increase to at least the level they were at before the problem occurred. And more importantly, the company’s reputation would be even stronger because the public would know how much it cares about them.

Now, in order to understand how an octopus is able to do this, you need to first know a little about its physical structure. Hmm . . . This may be a bit of a review for some of you, but, well, bear with me . . . The octopus’s eight arms don’t actually have any tentacles. These arms are referred to as, um, muscular hydrostats by biologists – mainly because their strength and rigidity is achieved solely through the compression of muscles. This is because the body of the octopus is composed almost entirely of soft tissue . . . it doesn’t have an internal skeleton. There is no protective shell . . . nor does it have any cartilage. In fact, the only hard part of an octopus is its beak, which resembles a parrot’s beak and functions in much the same way. One particular species of octopus – the mimic octopus – is able to use this shape-shifting ability to imitate other species. It can mimic, uh, seventeen different species found in its habitat.

As most of these are poisonous, this proves to be a great defense strategy for the octopus. Does anyone know what some of these poisonous species are?

S2: I’ve read that it can flatten itself to look like the poisonous sole, or even use its arms to mimic a lionfish, which, uh, has venomous fins.

P: Right, and you can be sure predators will go out of their way to avoid them! And there’s skin texture as well. Normally the skin of an octopus is very smooth. This could prove to be a disadvantage if it was trying to blend in with, uh . . . a piece of coral with a very rough surface. However, by distending small sections of its skin, and using color-shading to enhance the effect, the octopus can make the texture of its skin resemble almost anything. In some cases, even plants!

S2: I’ve seen pictures of these octopuses mimicking various things, um, like sea snakes and even rocks. But I’m really interested in that ink jet I read about. Octopuses can create an ink cloud to hide themselves . . .

It isn’t that the air gets progressively warmer . . . It’s that temperatures and humidity levels fluctuate significantly as the snowflake moves through different air masses. Exposure to these, uh, changing atmospheric conditions determines the thickness of something called the quasi-liquid layer. You see, there is a thin film of water on the surface of ice crystals that is . . . well, it’s neither frozen nor liquid. It’s somewhere in between. And it’s the molecules in this layer that bond with those in the surrounding air. As a result, a snowflake’s growth pattern is determined by the thickness of its quasi-liquid layer. 08 When the surrounding air is cold and dry, this layer is very thin . . . so the snowflake develops long needle-like structures as it expands. But the quasi-liquid layer thickens in warmer, wetter air . . . which leads to the formation of flat, plate-like structures. And the longer the snowflake spends in the air, the more complex its shape will be . . . um, it is subjected to a wider range of atmospheric conditions . . . 06 Now, the other thing I want to discuss is how the process of snowflake formation can result in the transfer of atmospheric pollutants to the ground. This happens in a couple of ways . . . The first goes back to what I mentioned earlier about water vapor crystallizing around airborne particles. Sometimes these particles are pollutants such as lead. So the snowflake has a toxic substance at its core and transports it all the way down to the ground . . . Yes?