1 . Drugs that could save tens of thousands of lives in Britain should be prescribed (开药) to three times as many patients as at present, medical experts recommended after a study showed these drugs have great effects on heart disease and stroke (中风).
British research has shown that statins, a class of drug that lowers cholesterol (胆固醇), can prevent a third of all cases of heart disease or stroke in patients at highest risk. If statins were given to 10 million high-risk patients, they could save at least 50,000 lives a year worldwide. In Britain, where heart disease is the leading cause of death, statins could save up to 10,000 lives a year.
Studies have found that safety issues surrounding statins were so tiny that they were significant. The risk of muscle problems was only about one in ten thousand. Fears that statins could increase deaths from other diseases, such as cancer, were assuaged by the study. At present, only people with high cholesterol are prescribed statins, but the eight-year study found that anyone at risk of heart disease or stroke could benefit. Statins are now given to fewer than one in twenty people aged over 40, mostly men with heart disease or high cholesterol. Under the recommendation, this would increase to one in eight.
A total of 20,000 volunteers aged 40 to 80 took part in the study, which looked at the effects of statins on patients for whom the benefits were uncertain. The guidelines previously said that female patients aged over 65 would not benefit from the drug, but the five years of monitoring all types of patients at high risk of heart attacks and stroke showed that everyone benefited as much from statins. The new recommendations will be easy to put into practice because statins are readily available and the patients who benefit from them most are already known to doctors.
1. What does paragraph 2 focus on?| A．Main diseases in Britain. | B．Side effects caused by statins. |
| C．Positive effects of statins. | D．The numbers of heart disease cases. |
| A．Eased. | B．Discovered. | C．Ignored. | D．Compared. |
| A．The effects of the drug are unclear. | B．The drug can be widely prescribed. |
| C．The drug hardly benefits female patients. | D．The drug should be limited in application. |
| A．To call for the monitoring of drug studies. | B．To explain different ways of testing drugs. |
| C．To seek improvement in the drug research. | D．To spread medical experts’ recommendation. |
2 . If you could save someone’s life, would you? That question was
After securing a good test result, Eileen phoned her mother, “Hey, don’t get
The transplant surgery went
Without a second thought, Eileen
Daniel G. Maluf, M. D. , the surgeon for both of Julia’s procedures, said, “The mom’s kidney function recovered
| A．alarming | B．burning | C．disturbing | D．damaging |
| A．organizers | B．models | C．donors | D．losers |
| A．decision | B．difference | C．mistake | D．examination |
| A．organs | B．matches | C．chances | D．applicants |
| A．fearful | B．ignorant | C．upset | D．mad |
| A．met with | B．commented on | C．agreed to | D．burst into |
| A．badly | B．slowly | C．smoothly | D．obviously |
| A．dream | B．page | C．certificate | D．message |
| A．loss | B．pain | C．function | D．failure |
| A．recover | B．apply | C．suffer | D．develop |
| A．settled down | B．stood out | C．jumped in | D．sank in |
| A．transformed | B．observed | C．influenced | D．accomplished |
| A．immediately | B．gradually | C．eventually | D．independently |
| A．helpful | B．generous | C．appreciative | D．impressive |
| A．went ahead | B．came forward | C．took on | D．gave in |
3 . For decades, scientists thought of the brain as the most valuable and consequently most closely guarded part of the body. Locked safely behind the blood-brain barrier, it was broadly free of the harm of viruses and the battles started by the immune system (免疫系统). Then, about 20 years ago, some researchers began to wonder: is the brain really so separated from the body? The answer, according to a growing body of evidence, is no.
The list of brain conditions that have been associated with changes elsewhere in the body is long and growing. Changes in the makeup of the microorganisms in the digestive system have been linked to disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. There is also a theory that infection during pregnancy could lead to brain diseases in babies.
The effect is two-way. There is a lengthening list of symptoms not typically viewed as disorders of the nervous system, but the brain plays a large part in them. For example, the development of a fever is influenced by a population of nerve cells that control body temperature and appetite. Evidence is mounting that cancers use nerves to grow and spread.
The interconnection between the brain and body has promising implications for our ability to both understand and treat illnesses. If some brain disorders start outside the brain, then perhaps treatments for them could also reach in from outside. Treatments that take effect through the digestive system, the heart or other organs, would be much easier and less risky than those that must cross the blood-brain barrier.
It also works in the opposite direction. Study shows mice have healthier hearts after receiving stimulation to a brain area involved in positive emotion and motivation. Activation of the brain reward centre — called the ventral tegmental area (VTA) — seems to cause immune changes that contribute to it. Working out how this happens could help to destroy cancers, enhance responses to vaccines and even re-evaluate physical diseases that, for centuries, have not been considered as being psychologically driven.
1. What do the researchers focus on about the brain?| A．Its protecting system. | B．Its exposure to diseases. |
| C．Its controlling function. | D．Its connection to the body. |
| A．By explaining a theory. | B．By providing examples. |
| C．By making comparisons. | D．By presenting cause and effect. |
| A．Cheaper. | B．More specific. |
| C．Safer. | D．More direct. |
| A．Brain health depends on immune changes. |
| B．Brain stimulation leads to negative emotions. |
| C．The brain can help enhance psychological health. |
| D．The brain may be key to treating physical diseases. |
4 . There are many things you can do to engage in self-care.
Take a self-care trip.
Let a pet help you with your self-care. Pets can bring a boost to our lives. From giving unconditional love to providing companionship, pets can be hugely beneficial for our self-care.
Take care of yourself by getting organized. Getting organized is often the first step to becoming a healthier you.
| A．Read a book on self-care for self-care. |
| B．Take a self-care break by getting outside. |
| C．It provides a mind shift that enables you to feel prioritized. |
| D．You can read about self-care strategies or join self-care programs. |
| E．Consider making a healthy meal for yourself or your whole family. |
| F．Dogs especially can help reduce stress and can even lower blood pressure. |
| G．It allows you to figure out exactly what you need to do in a planned manner. |
5 . Beejhy Barhany, growing up in an Ethiopian-Jewish community in Israel, has been cooking for her family as long as she can remember. Now a chef and owner of Tsion Café in Harlem, New York, Barhany continues to pull from cooking traditions, including one that has become the source of much controversy in recent decades: washing raw meat before cooking.
For Barhany, submerging raw chicken in salt and lemon water is both functional and ceremonial, as soaking or rinsing raw meat in salt water and acid-such as lemon juice or vinegar-is a common form of “washing” required by Jewish Kosher rules. And a 2015 survey of over 1, 500 American consumers found that nearly 70 percent rinse or wash their poultry before cooking it, though the U. S. Department of Agriculture( USDA) started telling consumers not to wash raw poultry in the 1990s. Experts including those from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strongly warned that rather than reducing the risk of foodborne illness (食源性疾病), washing meat increases the likelihood of spreading unwanted pathogens (病原体), like salmonella and campylobacter, around the kitchen.
“Washing meat before cooking is not really helping,” says Betty Feng, associate professor of food science at Purdue University. “The only thing it does is splashing (飞溅) and could cross-contaminate a lot of your kitchen items-your sink, probably your clothes, whatever you have by the sink.” Moreover, Feng cautions against using saltwater, vinegar, or lemon juice, which simply isn’t strong enough to effectively kill foodborne pathogens. “If the acidity is high enough to kill bacteria, then it’s not really likely you can use your bare hand to wash,” she says.
And a 2022 study showed that submerging meat in a bowl of water reduced the splashing but not the spread of germs. “I would treat the entire sink just like the outside of the chicken——it’s a biological hazard,” says Benjamin Chapman, one of the study authors and associate professor in North Carolina State University’s agricultural and human sciences department. “The way that we make meat safe is through cooking, not through the removal of pathogens.”
1. What is the purpose of paragraph 1?| A．To broaden the readers’ horizons. | B．To make a comparison. |
| C．To introduce the topic. | D．To state the author’s opinion. |
| A．Nearly 70 percent of American consumers follow the rules. |
| B．The rules pay attention to functional and ceremonial aspects. |
| C．Uncooked meat is submerged in water with salt and vinegar. |
| D．It warns people of the risk of foodborne illness. |
| A．It has sparked a lot of controversy in recent years. |
| B．It has decreased the risk of foodborne illness. |
| C．It can not be directly done/with your bare hands. |
| D．It may do a favor/ to the transfer of pathogens. |
| A．To emphasize that chickens pose a level/of threat to humans’ life. |
| B．To show that sinks can be a way to increase splashing. |
| C．To prove that cooking is a good way to kill pathogens. |
| D．To stress that the practice people follow is not advisable. |
6 . Sugar was my first choice when I was sad or happy, and the dependency and health consequences made it my abuser even as early as age five. For over twenty years after seven, every weight loss intervention failed me, leaving me feeling hopeless.
I was fourteen when I went to my first weight-loss camp. I knew that I would regain all the weight I’d lost when I went home. A little voice inside me whispered. “You should help people. You should make a program that really works.” That voice got louder with each failed diet. It sparked a need to help others who were struggling like me.
Eventually, I recognized that my issue was sugar. I broke up with sugar and dieting and found a way to heal my relationship with food. I finally created a program that would help people in the way that I had needed desperately all along.
That program took off. My clients discovered that their relationships with food could be loving and sustainable. As a result, I was often encouraged to take my message to a larger platform. But when l finally was committed to sharing my story with the world, I knew that I had to tell it all leaving no stone unturned.
My friend Rumi said, “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” Finally, I was ready to tell my story, shining a big and bright light on all the wounds. With anxiety screaming in my ear, I made progress and wrote Breaking Up with Sugar. Now, I receive daily e-mails from readers telling me that they finally feel heard and understood. They’re hopeful for the first time in their lives. To me, this is the truest meaning of life — to be truly healthy and loving. The greatest lesson I’ve learned on this journey is that. by embracing my truth, loving and sharing it, I am able to become the best version of myself — someone whom I love and cherish.
1. What was the author aware of at her first weight loss camp?| A．She had eating problems. | B．She would be abused there. |
| C．She was badly in need of help. | D．She would gain weight after that. |
| A．To cope with her dependency on sugar. | B．To make weight loss her lifelong career. |
| C．To strengthen the effect gained at camps. | D．To help people having the same problem as her. |
| A．The author’s dependency on sugar. | B．The author’s turning over all stones. |
| C．The mental harm of being overweight. | D．The author’s changing attitude to anxiety. |
| A．Where there’s a will, there’s a way. | B．Accept imperfection as part of life itself. |
| C．Better an egg today than a hen tomorrow. | D．Failures are the stepping-stones to success. |
7 . The chorus of the theme song for the movie Fame, performed by actress Irene Cara, includes the line “I’m gonna live forever.” Cara was, of course, singing about the longevity (长存) that fame can bring after she dies. But in Silicon Valley, plenty of big names in big tech have sunk funding into solving the problem of death as if it were just an upgrade to your smartphone’s operating system.
Yet what if longevity will always have a ceiling, no matter what we do? Researchers have now taken on the question of how long we can live if we do not die from cancer, heart disease or getting hit by a bus. They report that when omitting things that usually kill us, our body still fades with time. And even if we make it through life with few stressors, this decline sets the maximum life span for humans at somewhere between 120 and 150 years.
For the study, Timothy Pyrkov, a researcher at a Singapore-based company, and his colleagues looked at this “pace of aging” in the U. S. , the U. K. and Russia. They assessed changes in blood cell counts and the daily number of steps taken and analyzed them by age groups.
For both blood cell and step counts, the pattern was the same; as age increased, some factor beyond disease drove a predictable and incremental (递增的) decline in the body’s ability to return blood cells or pace to a stable level after a disruption. The researchers also found that with age, the body’s, response to injuries could increasingly range far from a stable normal, requiring more time for recovery.
Measurements such as blood pressure and blood cell counts have a known healthy range, however, whereas step counts are highly personal. The fact that the researchers chose a variable that is so different from blood counts and still discovered the same decline over time may suggest a real pace of aging factor in play across different domains.
Study co-author Peter Fedichev says that although the majority of biologists would view blood cell counts and step counts as “pretty different”, the fact that both sources “paint exactly the same future” suggests that this pace of aging component is real.
1. Why did the author mention Irene Cara?| A．To introduce a concept. | B．To bring in the topic. |
| C．To prove the longevity of fame. | D．To show everyone’s dream. |
| A．Ignoring. | B．Testing. | C．Analyzing. | D．Changing. |
| A．The pattern of blood cells. | B．The results of the research. |
| C．The process of the experiment. | D．The body’s response to injuries. |
| A．Advanced. | B．Unreliable. | C．Conventional. | D．Unusual. |
8 . French surgeons have performed what they said on Wednesday was the world’s first partial face transplant — giving a new nose, chin and lips to a woman attacked by a dog.
Specialists from two French hospitals carried out the operation on a 38-year-old woman on Sunday in the northern city of Amiens by taking the face from a brain-dead woman, who had hanged herself just hours before the operation. Her family agreed on the operation.
“The patient is in an excellent state and the transplant looks normal.” The hospitals said in a brief statement after waiting three days to announce the pioneering surgery. The woman had been left without a nose and lips after the dog attacked her last May, and was unable to talk or chew properly. Such injuries are “extremely difficult, if not impossible” to repair using normal surgical techniques, the statement said. The statement did not say what the woman would look like when she had fully recovered, but medical experts said she was unlikely to resemble the woman who had been the source of her new face. The operation was led by Jean-Michel Dubernard, a specialist from a hospital in Lyon who has also carried out hand transplants. Skin transplants have long been used to treat burns and other injuries, but operations around the mouth and nose have been considered very difficult because of the area’s high sensitivity to foreign tissue. Teams in France, the United States and Britain had been developing techniques to make face transplants a reality.
There was a short-term risk for the patient if blood vessels (脉管) became blocked, a medium-term danger of her body rejecting the new skin and a long-term possibility that the drugs used could cause cancers. Experts say that although such medical advances should be celebrated, the transplant had thrown up moral and ethical (伦理的) issues. Little is known about the psychological effect of the transplant.
1. What makes the woman’s operation extremely challenging?| A．The patient’s unstable mood. |
| B．The doctor’s lack of surgical techniques. |
| C．The masses’ unacceptance of this transplant. |
| D．The damaged area’s high sensitivity to transplanted tissues. |
| A．Heart damage. | B．Organ rejection. |
| C．Side effect of the drugs. | D．Block of blood vessels. |
| A．The woman had used the dead woman’s whole face. |
| B．Such transplants have been performed by top doctors. |
| C．The woman will suffer from psychological damage soon. |
| D．There has arisen a moral and ethical debate about the operation. |
| A．First Face Transplant Opens Debate. |
| B．French Woman has First Partial Face Transplant. |
| C．Risks and Ethical Problems of a Face Transplant. |
| D．A Complete Face Transplant of a French Woman. |
9 . This summer, climate change continues to push Earth’s weather to extremes.
Protect your skin — it’s the body’s cooling system. Your skin and related tissues are incredibly designed to move warm blood away from your core to keep your vital organs cool. Any damage to your skin or the underlying tissue prevents your body from being able to air condition itself. To protect your skin, start with sunscreen.
Wear materials that will help your body breathe.
Hydrate before, during and after exercise. Dehydration can really happen to you.
| A．Don’t eat right before you head out. |
| B．Try more heat-friendly forms of exercise. |
| C．The type of suitable clothing you wear can also help you stay cool. |
| D．But high outside temperatures in a dry climate can also be dangerous. |
| E．Is a daytime run or bike ride in hot summer weather OK for our bodies? |
| F．And consider wearing sun-protective clothing that blocks the sun, and include a hat. |
| G．Make sure you are drinking water at least an hour before you head out to exercise. |
10 . The Heimlich Maneuver Guideline
In the early 1970s, Henry J. Heimlich, MD, developed a first aid technique for choking, known as the Heimlich maneuver.
Knowing when to use the Heimlich maneuver can be vital in emergency situations. If a person appears unable to speak or starts motioning toward their throat, they are likely choking.
The National Safety Council provides the following steps to help a person who is choking, if they are still conscious. First of all, stand behind the person with one leg forward between the person’s legs. And then, put your arms around the person and locate their belly button. Place the thumb side of one fist against the stomach just above their belly button.
Avoid giving small kids hard candy, ice cubes, and popcorn. Cut foods that kids can easily choke on into tiny pieces. This can include grapes and other fruit, raw carrots, hot dogs, and chunks of cheese. Avoid laughing or talking while chewing and swallowing.
| A．How to prevent choking. |
| B．Choking is an incredibly scary experience. |
| C．How to prepare for the Heimlich Maneuver |
| D．In these cases, it’s crucial to help immediately. |
| E．If the patient is unresponsive, call medical help immediately. |
| F．Use quick thrusting movements five times or until they expel the item. |
| G．Dr. Heimlich developed this method after reading an article about accidental deaths. |
