To Be Joyful, To Be Young

What really works to make sustainable changes in diet and lifestyle? It’s probably not what you think. In the past 30 years of conducting clinical research, I     21    (learn) that real keys are pleasure, joy and freedom. Joy of living is sustainable; fear of dying is not.

Why? Because life is to be enjoyed. There’s no point     22    (abandon) something you enjoy unless you get something back that’s even better, and quickly. When people eat more healthfully,     23    (quit) smoking, and manage stress better, they find they feel so much better, so quickly. It reconstructs the reason for making these changes from fear of dying to joy of living.

When you exercise and eat right, your brain receives more blood flow and oxygen, so you become smarter, have more energy, and need less sleep. Two studies showed just walking for three hours per week for only three months caused so many neurons(神经细胞)     24    (grow) that it actually increased the size of people’s brains!

Your face receives more blood flow, so your skin glows more and wrinkles less. You look younger and more attractive. In contrast, an unhealthy diet, lasting emotional stress and smoking reduce blood flow to your face     25    you age more quickly. Smoking speeds up aging because nicotine contributes to your blood vessel becoming narrower,     26    decreases blood flow to your face and makes it wrinkle prematurely. This is why smokers look years older than they really are.

One of the most interesting findings was that the mothers’ awareness of stress was more important than     27    was objectively occurring in their lives.     28    (give) a questionnaire, the women were asked to rate on a three-point scale how stressed they felt each day. The women who realized they were under heavy stress had significantly shortened and damaged telomeres(染色体端粒) compared with     29    who felt more relaxed. Contrarily, some of the women who felt relaxed     30    raising a disabled child had more normal-appearing telomeres.

In other words, if you feel stressed, you are stressed.

Welcome to Windsor Castle

Windsor Castle is the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world and the Official Residence of the Queen of Britain. Over a period of nearly 1,000 years it has been     31    continuously, and altered and redecorated by monarchs(君主) one after the other. Some were great builders, strengthening the Castle against     32     and rebellion; others, living in more peaceful times, created a grand Royal residence. William the Conqueror chose the site, high above the river Thames and on the edge of a Saxon hunting ground. It was a day’s march from the Tower of London and intended to guard the western     33    to the capital. The outer walls of today’s structure are in the same position as those of the    34    castle built by William the Conqueror in the 1070s. The Queen uses the Castle both as a private home, where she usually spends the weekend, and as a Royal residence at which she undertakes certain formal duties. Windsor Castle is    35    used by the Queen to host State Visits from overseas monarchs and presidents. Every year the Queen takes up official residence in Windsor Castle for a month over Easter (March-April).

The Castle is huge, so people tend to head for the most    36    bits -- the State Apartments, St. George’s Chapel, the Gallery and the delightful Queen Mary’s Dolls House. Works of art, antique furniture, curiosities and impressive architecture reflect the tastes of many different royal generations. The State Apartments are    37    decorated formal rooms still used for state and official functions.

The magnificent and beautiful St. George’s Chapel was started in 1475 by Edward IV and was completed 50 years later by Henry VIII. It    38    among the finest examples of late medieval architecture in the UK.

The Drawings Gallery    39    the exhibition “The Queen: 60 Photographs for 60 Years”. The exhibition presents portraits of the Queen    40    in brief moments on both official occasions and at relaxed family gatherings.

“Nature and Nurture”

People have wondered for a long time how their personalities and behaviour are formed. However, it is not easy to explain why one person is intelligent and another is not, or why one is cooperative and another is _________.

Social scientists are of course_________interested in these types of questions. They want to explain why we possess certain characteristics and exhibit certain behaviour. There are no clear answers yet, but two_________schools of thought on the matter have developed. As one might expect, the two approaches are very different from each other, and there is a great deal of debate between_________of each theory. The controversy(争论) is often conveniently referred to as “nature and nurture”.

Those who_________the “nature” side of the conflict believe that our personalities and behaviour patterns are_________determined by biological factors. That our environment has little, if anything, to do with our abilities, characteristics and behaviour is_________to this theory. Taken to an extreme, this theory states that our behaviour is predetermined to such a great degree that we are almost completely governed by our_________.

Supporters of the “nurture” theory, or, as they are often called, _________, claim that our environment is more important than our biologically based instincts in determining how we will act. A behaviorist, B. F. Skinner, sees humans as beings whose behaviour is almost completely__________by their surroundings. The behaviorists’ view of the human being is quite mechanistic. They state that, like machines, humans respond to __________stimuli(刺激) as the basis of their behaviour.

Socially and politically, the consequences of these two theories are __________. In the US, for example, blacks often score below whites on standardized intelligence tests. This leads some “nature” supporters to conclude that blacks are genetically lower in status than whites are. Behaviorists, __________, say that the differences in scores are due to the fact that blacks are often robbed of many of the educational and other environmental advantages that whites enjoy, and that, as a result, they do not develop the same__________that whites do.

Neither of these theories can yet fully explain human behaviour. As a matter of fact, it is quite__________that the key to our behaviour lies somewhere between these two extremes and that the controversy will continue for a long time is certain.

I’m a student in my fourth year of a biomedical science degree at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, but I also work 38 hours a week at Sainsbury’s to make ends meet. I do three night shifts a week, plus overtime if I can get it. Monday is the most occupied day for me — I work from 10 pm until 8 am on Saturday and Sunday nights, earning just over £100 a night, and then I have to be at my first lecture at 9 am on Monday. By the time I finish lectures, at 2 pm, I’m exhausted, but I know I have to be back at work by 10 pm.

I constantly have to force myself to stay awake, and to be alert, whatever it takes. A packet of Skittles and a Red Bull usually helps. The work I do at Sainsbury’s is very physical like stacking shelves. I’m lucky because I’m an active person and the amount I lift at work is nothing compared with the weights I lift in the gym. I know I have the strength to bear it.

I’m originally from Nigeria. I came here when I was seven, growing up in Croydon, south London. Money was tight. My parents gave me everything I needed, but there was no money to spend on luxuries. I worked hard at school though and, with the help of GT Scholars, I got some of the best A-level grades in my class.

Unfortunately, though I had applied for “settled” British residential status when very young, the Home Office waited until I was in sixth form to approve my application. That meant I wasn’t eligible for a student loan. The only way I could afford to go to university was that if I got a job that would pay for all my living costs and my parents, who work in market research, paid for my tuition fees. In Scotland, that’s about £7,000 a year.

I don’t have much time to socialize because of my job. Ideally, I would also like to have more time to study so I can excel at my course. Yes, I have a lot on my plate, but working hard isn’t new to me. Growing up, my parents and my mentors in the church and at GT Scholars cultivated in me the importance of working hard for what I want in life.

My dream is to do an MA in physiotherapy next year and then get a job working for the NHS. But right now, I’m just focused on trying to get the best grades I can. Whenever I find life hard, I tell myself this is about my future. I don’t need much, but I would like to worry less about money and have more free time. That is what I look forward to the most.

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The haunting paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck, on show in the final leg of a travelling tour that has already attracted thousands of visitors in Hamburg and the Hague, may come as a surprise to many. Few outside the Nordic(北欧的) world would recognize the works of this Finnish artist who died in 1946. More people should. The 120 works have at their core 20 self-portraits, half the number she painted in all. The first, dated 1880, is of a wide-eyed teenager eager to absorb everything. The last is a sighting of the artist's ghost-to-be.

Prematurely gifted, Schjerfbeck was 11 when she entered the Finnish Art Society's drawing school. “The Wounded Warrior in the Snow”, a history painting, was bought by a private collector and won her a state travel grant when she was 17. Schjerfbeck studied in Paris, went on to Pont-Aven, Brittany, where she painted for a year, then to Tuscany, Cornwall and St Petersburg. During her 1887 visit to St Ives, Cornwall, Schjerfbeck painted “The Convalescent”. A child wrapped in a blanket sits supported up in a large wicker(柳条编制的) chair, toying with a sprig(小枝条). The picture won a bronze medal at the 1889 Paris World Fair and was bought by the Finnish Art Society. To a modern eye it seems almost sentimental(感伤的) and is made up for only by the somewhat astonished, sad expression on the child's face, which may have been inspired by Schjerfbeck's early experiences. At four, she fell down a flight of steps and never fully recovered.

In 1890, Schjerfbeck settled in Finland. Teaching exhausted her, she did not like the works of other local painters, and she was further isolated when she took on the care of her mother. “If I allow myself the freedom to live an isolated life”, she wrote, “then it is because it has to be that way.” In 1902, Schjerfbeck and her mother settled in the small, industrial town of Hyvinkaa, 50 kilometres north of Helsinki. Isolation had one desired effect for it was there that Schjerfbeck became a modern painter. She produced still lives and landscapes but above all moody yet sharp portraits of her mother, local school girls, women workers in town.

“I have always searched for the dense depths of the soul, which have not yet been discovered by humans themselves”, she wrote, “where everything is still unconscious -- there one can make the greatest discoveries.” She experimented with different kinds of underpainting, scraped and rubbed, made bright rosy red spots; doing whatever had to be done to capture the subconscious — her own and that of her models. In 1913, Schjerfbeck was rediscovered by an art dealer and journalist, Gosta Stenman. Once again she was a success.

The quality of patience goes a long way toward your goal of creating a more peaceful and loving self. The more patient you are, the more accepting you will be of what life is, rather than insisting that life be exactly as you would like it to be. Without patience, life is extremely frustrating.     67     Patience adds some ease and acceptance to your life. It's important for inner peace.

    68     If you are stuck in a traffic jam, late for an appointment, being patient would mean keeping yourself from building a mental snowball before your thinking gets out of hand and gently reminding yourself to relax. It might also be a good time to breathe as well as an opportunity to remind yourself that, in the bigger scheme of things, being late is "small stuff".

Patience is a quality of heart that can be greatly enhanced with deliberate practice.     69     They are the periods of time that I set up in my mind to practice the art of patience. Life itself becomes a classroom, and the curriculum is patience. You can start with as little as five minutes and build up your capacity for patience over time. What you'll discover is truly amazing. Your intention to be patient, especially if you know it's only for a short while, immediately strengthens your capacity for patience. Patience is one of those qualities where success feeds on itself. Once you reach little milestone-five minutes of successful patience-you'll begin to see that you do indeed have the capacity to be patient, even for longer periods of time. Over time, you may even become a patient person.

Being patient will help you to keep your perspective. You will see even a difficult situation, say your present challenge, isn’t "life or death" but simply a minor obstacle that must be dealt with.     70    .

A remarkable variety of insects live in this planet. More species of insects exist than all other animal species together. Insects have survived on earth for more than 300 million years, and may possess the ability to survive for millions more. Insects can be found almost everywhere -- on the highest mountains and on the bottom of rushing streams, in the cold South Pole and in bubbling hot springs. They dig through the ground, jump and sing in the trees, and run and dance in the air. They come in many different colours and various shapes.

There are many reasons why insects are so successful at surviving. Their amazing ability to adapt permits them to live in extreme ranges of temperatures and environments. The one place where they have not yet been found to any major extent is in the open oceans. Insects can survive on a wide range of natural and artificial foods -- paint, pepper, glue, books, grain, cotton, other insects, plants and animals. Because they are small they can hide in tiny spaces.

Also, insects have an enormous reproductive capacity: An African ant queen can lay as many as 43,000 eggs a day.

Another reason for their success is the strategy of protective colour. An insect may be right before our eyes, but nearly invisible because it is cleverly disguised(伪装) like a green leaf, lump of brown soil, gray lichen(青苔), a seed or some other natural object. Some insects use bright, bold colours to send warning signals that they taste bad, sting or are poison. Others have wing patterns that look like the eyes of a huge predator, bitter-tasting insects; hungry enemies are fooled into avoiding them.