The reason why science exists is to improve our lives. Sometimes science can ruin our small guilty pleasures we nature to be happier, though. These four little truths are just some of those.
Sleeping with pets is a good way to catch the plague(瘟疫), or some other bacterial infections, as is claimed in the study done in February 2011 in Emerging Infectious Diseases magazine. The study shares a case of a nine-year-old boy whose cat caught the plague and gave it to its owners while they were sharing a bed. A regular visit to the vet can greatly reduce the risk of your pet catching any disease that may infect the owner as well.
A recent study done on 200,000 people has shown that vitamin supplements do nothing to improve our lives, and what is worse—they actively increase our death risk. This conclusion from 2010 was so unbelievable that it made researchers do even more studies. Each study had the same result. People who choose vitamin supplements over fruit and vegetables are the same as people who choose to eat a burger over a healthy salad.
People who use the solarium(日光浴室)experience certain changes to their brains that are very similar to many caused by drug addiction. According to a study, our brain can in fact recognize the difference between the natural UV light and the solarium.
Long exposure to artificial light during the night is directly linked to a higher risk of breast cancer, obesity and depression. Exposure to artificial light before sleeping disturbs the natural biorhythms(生物节奏)of our bodies, which leads to restriction on the hormone(荷尔蒙)melatonin, which is the hormone that helps us fall asleep.
| Title: Four scientific |
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| Passage outline |
Supporting details |
| Sharing bed with your pet is a terrible idea |
*You will probably be infected with *To reduce such risk, you should take your pet to visit the vet |
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Vitamin supplements actively increase the risk of |
| You can become |
The solarium may bring about changes to the |
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*You are likely to *The natural biorhythms of your bodies will be disturbed and you will find it not |
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Aspirin has been called a wonder drug because it has so many applications. As opposed to most drugs, which have a single purpose, aspirin is a pain reliever, a fever reducer, and a blood thinner all in one. Scientists didn’t begin to truly understand how aspirin works until the 1970s, but we now know that aspirin prevents cells from producing prostaglandins (前列腺素), chemicals that carry pain messages from damaged cells to the brain.
Preventing prostaglandin production is also how aspirin helps keep blood flowing through the cardiovascular (心脏血管的) system. Aspirin shuts down the production of many types of prostaglandins, one of which causes blood cells to stick together and helps prevent clots (凝块). By preventing this particular prostaglandin’s production, aspirin thins the blood. Many people with heart disease take a low dose of aspirin every day as a preventative measure against heart attacks and strokes. While it’s not known exactly how aspirin reduces fevers, modern physicians and researchers believe that aspirin acts on the hypothalamus (下丘脑), the part of the brain that regulates autonomic functions, including body temperature.
Because of its long history and roots in traditional medicine, aspirin is often thought to be completely safe and harmless, but unfortunately, even a wonder drug can have some downsides. Doctors warn people with clotting problems against taking aspirin, since it can make clotting disorders worse, and it shouldn’t be taken for lengthened periods of time after operations, since it can slow healing by preventing blood from clotting. Aspirin is particularly inadvisable for children, because kids who take aspirin (especially for things like fevers and the flu) are more likely to develop a deadly nervous-system disorder called Reye’s syndrome.
It’s worthwhile keeping a bottle of regular aspirin in the house. Besides coming in handy for various aches and pains, aspirin is also helpful in several household applications.
Aspirin is highly effective at reducing the redness caused by insect bites. Wet the area and put an aspirin tablet on the spot. Cut flowers will last longer if their water includes a crushed-up aspirin tablet. Because it contains salicylic acid, aspirin also works to reduce the appearance of pimples (脓疱). Putting an aspirin paste on a pimple will help dry it out and get rid of the redness.
If you find that your white T-shirts accumulate yellow stains, aspirin can fix those, too. Break a few pills into pieces, mix them with some warm water, and wet the stains with the solution before washing—the aspirin will make the shirts look as good as new. Aspirin has also been recommended for bringing dead car batteries back to life and removing chlorine (氯) buildup from the hair of people who swim frequently in pools.
Considering all the things aspirin can do, modern medicine would be hard pressed to come up with something better.
| An Aspirin a Day Keeps Everything Away |
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| Passage outline |
Supporting details |
| Medicinal applications of aspirin |
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| Downsides of aspirin |
worsening clotting |
| reducing the redness caused by insect bites effectively enabling cut flowers to |
A listener from China has written for advice about how to lose weight. Michael in Shanghai says he is 26 and has battled obesity for most of his life.
Obesity, a severe weight problem, is a complex condition. A doctor may advise taking medicine along with changing one's behaviors. Experts say that the most successful weight-loss plans include a wellbalanced diet and exercise.
People who want to avoid weight gain have to balance the number of calories they eat with the number of calories they use. To lose weight, you can reduce the number of calories you take in, increase the number you use, or both.
A recent study looked at four of the most popular dieting plans in the US. Researchers at Stanford University in California studied over 300 overweight women, mostly in their thirties and forties. Each woman went on one of the four plans: Atkins, The Zone, Ornish or LEARN. The women attended diet classes and received written information about the food plans.
At the end of the year, the women on the Atkins diet had lost the most, more than four and one-half kilograms on average. They also did better on tests for cholesterol levels and blood pressure.
Christopher Gardner, who led the study, says the Atkins diet may be more successful because of its simple message to eat less sugar. He also says that the advice to increase protein in the diet leads to more satisfying meals. He says that there was not enough money to study men, but that men would probably have similar results.
Last week, another report based on thirty-one studies suggested that only a small minority of people have long-term success with dieting. Most dieters regained their lost weight within five years and often they become more overweight. But those who kept the weight off generally were the ones who exercised.
Title: to lose weight
| Doctors' advice |
●take medicine along with |
| Experts' |
●a well-balanced diet: ● |
| Four of the most popular dieting plans in the US |
●Atkins: eat less sugar than usual and ●The Zone ● ●LEARN |
| From |
●have long-term success with dieting, otherwise most dieters will ●exercise is more important than dieting for |
Frederick M. Hess is the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, which is a nonprofit organization that conducts research on many public issues. He says that a long summer vacation doesn’t make sense in today’s world.
Can American students afford to take a summer vacation? In a summer vacation, millions of kids spend valuable time sending messages, watching TV, playing video games and doing shopping in the mall. They will also be putting their academic futures at risk.
Summer vacation once made sense in the past when you didn’t need an education to get a good job. But now things have changed. For today’s students, academic skills are important to students’future success, but such skills are affected in the summertime. Many nations don’t give kids an American-style summer vacation. They offer no more than seven consecutive（连续的） weeks of vacation. Most American school districts offer up to thirteen weeks. To compete in the global marketplace, Americans must be prepared to go up against international competitors.
Summer vacation also causes challenges for today’s families. In the 1960s, more than 60% of families had a stay-at-home Mom. Now two-thirds of American children live in households where every adult works. For these families, summer vacation can be more burden than break. Someone must watch the kids.
But the biggest problem may be how summer vacation hurts academic achievement. Researchers have found that disadvantaged students lose significant ground in the summertime.
A longer school year does not have to be an invitation to hard boring work. Rather, it should allow time-pressed teachers to conduct richer and more imaginative lessons. Schools would have more time to devote to athletics, languages, music and the arts. Summer vacation can be a grand thing. But in the 21st century, it may also be outdated.
Title: Summer Vacation
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A long summer vacation isn’t |
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| Basic Information |
13 weeks in most American schools |
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| Students’ |
·Sending messages and watching TV ·Playing video games ·Doing shopping |
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· ·Being a ·Hurting students’ academic achievement and resulting in |
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A longer school year does not have to |
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| Though being a ground thing, summer vacation might be out of |
The family sphere(范围) used to be defined by its isolation from the public realm. There was the public male realm（领域）of "rational accomplishment" and cruel competition, and the private female and child-rearing sphere of home, intuition（直觉）and emotion. The private realm was supposed to be isolated from the realities of adult life. For both better and worse, television and other electronic media tend to break down the difference between those two worlds. The membrane around the family sphere is much more permeable(可渗透的). TV takes public events and transforms them into dramas that are played out in the privacy of our living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms.
Parents used to be the channel through which children learned about the outside world. They could decide what to tell their children and when to tell it to them. Since children learn to read in stages, books provide a kind of natural screening process, where adults can decide what to tell and not tell children of different reading abilities. Television destroyed the system that separated adult from child knowledge and separated information into year-by-year slices for children of different ages. Instead, it presents the same information directly to children of all ages, without going through adult filters.
So television presents a real challenge to adults. While a parent can read a newspaper without sharing it with children in the same room, television is accessible to everyone in that space. And unlike books, television doesn't allow us to flip（翻转）through it and see what's coming up. We may think we're giving our children a lesson in science by having them watch the Challenger take off, and then suddenly they learn about death, disaster and adult mistakes.
Books allow adults to discuss privately what to tell or not tell children. This also allows parents to keep adult material secret from children and keep their secret keeping secret. Take that same material and put it on The Today Show and you have 800,000 children hearing the very things the adults are trying to keep from them. "Television takes our kids across the globe before parents give them permission to cross the street."
More importantly, children gradually learn that adults are worried and anxious about being parents. Actually, television has also places families under a lot of stress.
How Television Changes Childhood?
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| Distance between __ |
Homes used to be isolated from the ____ |
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| Homes nowadays are __ |
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| Media through which children can obtain information |
In the past, children might learn __ |
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| More information is got directly through TV and other electronic media, which breaks down the __ |
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| ___ |
Traditionally, kids could only knew what they should learn at their age, carefully___ |
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| Everything can possibly be known by children, including many aspects of __ |
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| Effects on family education |
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| Parental instruction |
Families are now under greater stress than before. Adults are anxious about being parents and faced with new __ |
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Society today tells us that automatic pencils are a lot better than manual ones which you have to sharpen every 5 seconds. Maybe this is true. However, there are some benefits from using an old-fashioned traditional pencil which you cannot get with an automatic one.
To be honest, it is quite convenient to use an automatic pencil with an easy press on the button. Meanwhile a manual pencil doesn’t enjoy any plus point. But it is sort of strange that manual pencils should be used in standardized tests today. Chances are that the manual pencil makes the line of grey look nicer.
Nowadays, it is always a battle of who has the newest, most high-tech gadget(小装置), from pencils, cars to clothes. The newer it is, it seems the more popular it becomes. If you walk around school, you will for sure find at least three out of ten people walking around with the latest iPhone 4S. If you are one of the luckier ones walking around with the newest Nokia phones, you will get laughed at.
Maybe an automatic pencil is better at the moment, but after using it for a while, usually the pencil will break. Most people lose them and don’t remember to carry extra lead(铅芯) to fill them up with, as it sometimes can do so much that it needs a lot of lead, just like an iPhone 4S needs to be charged after it has done so much work. As for the manual pencil, the lead will also run out but unlike the mechanical pencil it will last longer. Besides, the automatic pencil and the iPhone 4S are more likely to get stolen while the manual pencil along with the Nokia phone will be left alone and most likely-returned to you.
| Title |
Automatic Pencils |
| People’s |
●The newer-gadget like the iPhone 4s becomes more ●You will be |
| Advantages |
●We can use the automatic pencil more easily by ●The manual pencil is ●The manual pencil can last longer. |
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●The automatic pencils usually tend to ● People often ● |
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