【正文】 t think you could have done that if you hadn39。ll be future researchers who have a better perspective and will be able to really draw a line between the Holocene and the Anthropocene epics. Conversation 2 Narrator Listen to part of a conversation between a student and her biology . Professor Hi Samantha, how did your track meet go? Samantha Great! I placed first in one race and third in another. Professor Congratulations ! You must practice a lot. Samantha Three times a week preseason, but now that we ’ re peting every weekend, we practice 6 days a week from 3:30 till 5:00. Professor Athletics place a heavy demand on your time, don ’ t they? Samantha Yeah, but I really love peting, so … Professor You know I played soccer in college and my biggest challenge, and I didn ’ t always succeed, was getting my studying in during soccer season. Are you having a similar … Samantha No, I … I really do make time to study. A nd I actually study more for this class than I do for all my other classes. B ut I didn ’ t see the grade I expected on my midterm exam, which is why I came by. Professor Well, you didn39。s when agriculture was being widespread. Early farmers started clearing forests and livestock produced a lot of extra methane. But I want to stress this is just a hypothesis. The idea that early humans could have had such a major effect, well I39。s pretty easy to diffe rentiate geologically between these two epics. Now there is growing evidence that the presence of humans has altered the earth so much that a new epic of geologic history has began – the Anthropocene epic, a new humaninflue nced epic. T his idea that we ’ ve entered a new Anthropocene epic was first proposed in 2020. T he idea is that around the year 1800 CE the human population became large enough, around a billion people, that its activities started altering the environment. T his was also the time of the industrial revolution, which brought a tremendous increase in the use of fossil fuels such coal. The exploitation of fossil fuels has brought pla wide developments: industrialization, construction, uh, mass transport. And these developments have caused major changes like additional erosion of the Earth ’ s surface and deforestation. Also, things like the damming of rivers , has caused increased sediment production, not to mention the addition of more carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere . Naturally all these changes show up in recent sediments. And these sediments are quite different from pre year 1800 sediment layers. Interestingly there39。t true eith er. Lavie thinks the solution lies in the brain ’ s ability to accept or ignore visual information. She thinks its capacity is limited. I t ’ s like a highway. W hen there are too many cars, traffic is sto pp e d. No one can get on. S o when the brain is loaded to capacity, no new distractions can be perceived . Now that may be the correct conclusion for visual distractions, but more research is needed to tell us how the brain deals with, say, the distractions of solving a math problem when we are hungry or when someone is singing in the next room. Lecture 2 Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a geology class . Professor As geologists , we examine layers of sediment on the Earth39。t even perceive irrelevant information when we are concentrating? Professor Yes that39。s responsible for the sensation of movement. Once again, Lavie gave people a puterbased task to do. They have to distinguish between words in upper and lowercase letters or even harder, they had to count the number of syllables in different words. This time the distraction was a moving star f i el d in the background, you know, where H looks like you are moving through space, passing stars. Normally area of V5 would be stimulated as those moving stars are perceived and sure enough, Lavie found that during the task area of V5 was active, so people were aware of the moving star field. That means people were not blocking out the distraction. Student So doesn39。s one of the hypotheses that was proposed, that the brain simply doesn39。t perceive irrelevant information . Maybe we just don39。s not. It39。ve lost my share of puter files, but not because I ’ m easily distracted. I just fet to save them. Professor And that39。ll cover everything you need to know to be a report e r for us . Can you e back this afternoon? He will be here until 5 o39。s worried about enrollment. Has the number of students been getting smaller in recent years? By how much? What kinds of plans are they considering to address this problem? Student Right, some of those issues are already in what I proposed . Advisor And you39。ve got that covered Student So I am starting with an article about the physics department. I guess I39。t been in for a couple of days. Just give me a second to check my . Uh … here is a message from Max. Let ’ s see. Well it seems you ’ ve really impressed him. He says it would be wonderful if you could join our staff. Student Oh, great! When can I start? Advisor WeII, you turned in an outline on something to do with the physics department? Student Yeah, they39。t looked at them yet . Advisor Oh, Max, the news editor. He looks a t all the submissions Student Oh , so he hasn39。t heard anything back yet, so, so I thought I39。d like the experience. It would look good on