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Every new parent knows that rocking can calm that uneasy baby when it’s time to take a nap. But the benefits of gentle movement may go beyond the baby stage. Because two new studies show that rocking also helps grown-ups, both human and mouse, get a good night’s sleep.
What should be no surprise is that movement can calm someone. Think of how many times you’ve fallen asleep on a train. But can motion really cause a nap, and make for a deeper sleep?
To find out, researchers invited 18 healthy volunteers for a sleepover. “So they came to the lab and slept one time on the motionless, normal bed. And one night where they got rocked.” said Aurore Perrault, a sleep researcher at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. “And what we find is that when compared to a motionless night, a whole night of rocking sleep has a beneficial effect not only on sleep beginning but also on sleep continuity. “Subjects who were rocked also did better on a memory test the next morning than the stiller sleepers.
In the second study, Kompotis, a student at the University of Lausanne, rocked a group of mice. “Whether rocking affects sleep in other species was never before discussed. So the main questions for our study were whether rocking affects sleep in mice and what is the possible system? ”
Kompotis placed the mouse cages on a platform that moved from side to side. Though mice were rocked four times faster than their human counterparts—a frequency of one back-and-forth per second, or 1 Hertz, worked best—the results were strikingly similar. “During rocking at 1 Hertz, time spent asleep increased, and mice fell asleep twice as fast as at still condition.” However, additional studies could allow the researchers to identify a new aim for treating sleep disorders, including insomnia (失眠).
If you want a good night’s sleep, you might think about adding a little swing to your night-time routine.
1.What’s the purpose of the second study in the passage?
A.To do research on the sleep system of other species.
B.To see whether rocking affects sleep of other species.
C.To discuss in which case rocking affects baby’s sleep.
D.To study the influence of rocking on sleep disorders.
2.What do we know about the mice in Paragraph 5?
A.Their sleeping time went up when rocked at 1 Hertz.
B.Their sleep disorder including insomnia was treated.
C.When rocked, they fell asleep four times faster than at still condition.
D.When rocked, they slept faster than their human counterparts.
3.What’s the best title of the passage?
A.Rocking Helps Grown-ups Sleep Too.
B.Deep Sleep Needs the Constant Swing.
C.Rocking Greatly Affects Deep Sleep.
D.Rocking Can Treat Sleep Disorders.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析
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At a young age, Patti Wilson was told by her doctor that she was an epileptic (癫痫病患者). Her father, Jim Wilson, is a morning jogger. She ran with her father every day. After a few weeks, she told her father, “Daddy, what I’d really love to do is to break the world’s long-distance running record for women.” Her father checked the Guinness World Records and found that the farthest any woman had run was 80 miles.
As a freshman in high school, Patti announced, “I’m going to run from Orange County up to San Francisco.”(A distance of 400 miles.) “As a sophomore (二年级学生),” she went on, “I’m going to run to Portland, Oregon.”(Over 1,500-miles.) “As a junior, I’ll run to St. Louis.”(About 2,000 miles.) “As a senior, I’ll run to the White House.”(More than 3,000 miles away.)
In view of her handicap (缺陷), Patti was as ambitious as she was enthusiastic, but she said she looked at the handicap of being an epileptic as simply “an inconvenience”. She focused not on what she had lost, but on what she had left.
That year she completed her run to San Francisco wearing a T-shirt that read, “I Love Epileptics.” In her sophomore year, Patti’s classmates got behind her. They built a large poster that read — “Run, Patti, Run!”
On her second marathon (马拉松), a doctor told her she had to stop. “Doctor, you don’t understand,” she said. “I’m doing it to break the chains on the brains that limit so many others.”
She finished the run to Portland, completing her last mile with the governor of Oregon. After four months of almost continuous running from the West Coast to the East Coast, Patti arrived in Washington and shook the hand of the then President of the United States. She told him, “I wanted people to know that epileptics are normal human beings with normal lives.”
Because of Patti’s efforts, enough money had been raised to open up 19 multi-million-dollar epileptic centers around the country. If Patti Wilson can do so much with so little, what can you do to outperform (超越) yourself in a state of total wellness?
1.How did Patti look at her illness?
A.She thought of it as a gift.
B.She devoted all her attention to it.
C.She faced it with discouragement.
D.She considered it a small difficulty.
2.What did Patti do when a doctor asked her to stop her run?
A.She continued without quitting.
B.She focused on her treatment.
C.She followed his advice.
D.She asked for her classmates’ assistance.
3.Why did the author ask the question in the last paragraph?
A.To ask readers to answer it.
B.To get inactive people to run.
C.To encourage deep thinking.
D.To show his view on success.
难度: 简单查看答案及解析
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Following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP), also named COVID-19 by WHO, there is a general fear of the unknown virus as its full effects remain to be seen. Fever, coughing, sore throat, difficulty breathing —the NCP’s symptoms are similar to the common cold or the flu, but it’s potentially more dangerous.
Viruses could be deadly, like HIV and Ebola. But what are viruses? How can they cause so much trouble?
Viruses are non-living organisms (有机体) approximately one-millionth of an inch long. Unlike human cells or bacteria, they can’t reproduce on their own. Instead, they invade the cells of living organisms to reproduce, spread and take over.
Viruses can infect every living thing – from plants and animals down to the smallest bacteria. For this reason, they always have the potential to be dangerous to human life. Sometimes a virus can cause a disease so serious that it is fatal. Other viral infections trigger no noticeable reaction.
Viruses lie around our environment all of the time, waiting for a host cell to come along. They can enter our bodies by the nose, mouth, eyes or breaks in the skin. Once inside, they try to find a host cell to infect. For example, HIV, which causes AIDS, attacks the T-cells of the immune system.
But the basic question is, where did viruses first come from? Until now, no clear explanation for their origin exists. “Tracing the origins of viruses is difficult”, Ed Rybicki, a virologist (病毒学家) at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, told Scientific American, “because viruses don’t leave fossils and because of the tricks they use to make copies of themselves within the cells they’ve invaded”.
However, there are three main hypotheses (假说) to explain the origin of viruses. First, viruses started as independent organisms, then became parasites (寄生者). Second, viruses evolved from pieces of DNA or RNA that “escaped” from larger organisms. Third, viruses co-evolved with their host cells, which means they existed alongside these cells.
For the time being, these are only theories. The technology and evidence we have today cannot be used to test these theories and identify the most plausible explanation. Continuing studies may provide us with clearer answers. Or future studies may reveal that the answer is even murkier (含糊不清的) than it now appears.
1.What can we learn about viruses from the text?
A.Viruses have nothing to do with the common cold.
B.Viruses are really small living organisms.
C.Viruses can’t reproduce unless they find a host cell.
D.Viruses enter our bodies mainly through the mouth, nose and hair.
2.Which of the following might explain the origin of viruses?
A.They evolved from the fossils of large organisms.
B.They evolved from parasites into independent organisms.
C.They evolved from the T-cells in animals.
D.They evolved along with their host cells.
3.The underlined word “plausible” in the last paragraph probably means ________.
A.reasonable B.common
C.creative D.unbelievable
4.What can we conclude from the text?
A.Viruses live longer in human host cells than in animals’.
B.Viruses will become more like bacteria as they evolve.
C.It may take a long time to understand the origin of viruses.
D.The author is optimistic about future virus research.
难度: 中等查看答案及解析