As palaeontologists can tell, Neanderthals (尼安德特人) died out around 40,000 years ago. But they did not vanish from the Earth entirely. In the past decade it has become clear that Neanderthals mated with the ancestors of modern humans, and that some of those unions produced offspring (generations to follow). The result is that almost half of the Neanderthal genome survives, spread in small quantities among most modern people's DNA. The exception is those with mostly African ancestors, for Neanderthals seem never to have lived in Africa.
Such genes have been associated with everything from hairiness to fatness. Many seem to be related to the immune system, and to affect the risk of developing diseases including lupus, Crohn's disease and diabetes.
A pair of recent papers suggest Covid-19 belongs on that list as well. Two long DNA strings, both inherited from Neanderthals, appear to have resistance or sensibility to severe Covid-19, depending on which is present.
The work was led by Hugo Zeberg and Svante Paabo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, whose researchers pioneered the study of Neanderthal DNA.
Their first paper, published in Nature in September, described one Neanderthal DNA string, known as a “haplotype” (单体型), which is associated with a higher risk of serious illness.
Having one copy of the haplotype, which is found on the third of the 46 chromosomes possessed by humans, doubles the chances of a trip to intensive care. Those unlucky enough to possess two copies, one from each parent, face an even higher risk.
That genetic bad luck is not evenly distributed. It is most common among people of South Asia, with 63 per cent of the population of Bangladesh carrying at least one copy; and among Europeans, where the rate is around 16 per cent. As expected, it is almost absent from Africa. More strikingly, it is also very rare in Eastern Asia.
Exactly what the haplotype does is not clear. One gene within it affects a protein that interacts with the cellular receptors (细胞受体) that SARS-CoV-2 (the virus which causes Covid-19) uses to enter cells and control them.
The haplotype is also thought to be involved in the production of signalling proteins, called cytokines, which help to regulate the immune system. An overly aggressive immune response is one mechanism by which Covid-19 kills.
1. Who are the most likely to carry the haplotype according to the study?| A．Eastern Asians. | B．Africans. | C．Europeans. | D．South Asians. |
| A．The haplotype is equally distributed among people in different races. |
| B．Covid-19 kills partly because the immune system responds to SARS-CoV-2 abnormally. |
| C．The haplotype appears to have resistance or sensibility to severe Covid-19. |
| D．People unlucky to have two copies of the haplotype are sure to suffer from serious illness. |
| A．Why the Neanderthal genome is related to a higher risk of serious illness. |
| B．What effects the haplotype has on different people in different races. |
| C．Why the haplotype makes people have a higher risk of Covid-19. |
| D．What the haplotype does to affect and regulate the immune system. |
| A．The second study on Covid-19. |
| B．The previous study about Neanderthals. |
| C．The other Neanderthal DNA string. |
| D．The sensibility to severe Covid-19. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Couch potatoes live an inactive lifestyle.
According to a recent study, spending more than two hours watching TV every day is likely to increase the risk of heart disease. To study whether time spent in watching TV is connected to arteriosclerosis — a sign of heart disease, Dutch researchers asked 373 men and women participants to fill out questionnaires.
| A．There is a similar study in Australia. |
| B．They sit longer hours than do exercise. |
| C．Watching TV can sometimes be beneficial to viewers. |
| D．Sitting for a long time may produce unfortunate results. |
| E．After a four-year follow-up, the researchers got unsurprising results. |
| F．They spend most of their time simply sitting on the couch, watching television. |
| G．She believes that TV watching brings much more bad effects than we can expect. |
【推荐2】From Mozart to Metallica, tons of people enjoy listening to various types of music while they paint or write. Many believe that music helps boost creativity, but an international study conducted by British and Swedish researchers is challenging that belief. Their findings indicate that music actually stymies creativity.
To come to their conclusions, researchers had participants complete verbal insight problems designed to inspire creativity while sitting in a quiet room, and then again while music played in the background. They found that background music “significantly damaged” the participants’ ability to complete tasks associated with verbal creativity. The research team also tested background noises such as those commonly heard in a library, but found that such noises had no impact on subjects’ creativity. The tasks were simple word games. For example, participants were given three words, such as dress, dial, and flower. Then, they were asked to find a single word associated with all three that could be combined to form a common phrase or word. The single word, in this case, would be “sun” (sundress, sunflower, sundial). Participants completed the tasks in either a quiet room, or a room with 3 different types of music: music with unfamiliar lyrics (歌词), instrumental music, or music with familiar lyrics.
“We found strong evidence of damaged performance when playing background music in comparison to quiet background conditions,” says co-author Dr. Neil McLatchie of Lancaster University.
Dr. McLatchie and his colleagues theorize that music interferes (干涉) with the verbal working memory processes of the brain, blocking creativity. Also, as far as the library background noises having seemingly no effect, the study’s authors believe that was the case because library noises create a “steady state” environment that doesn’t disrupt concentration. It’s worth mentioning that even familiar music with well-known lyrics damaged participants’ creativity, regardless of whether or not it caused a positive reaction, or whether participants typically studied or created while listening to music.
1. Why are Mozart and Metallica mentioned at the beginning?| A．To prove they are very creative. | B．To introduce the topic of the text. |
| C．To show the importance of music. | D．To offer some background information. |
| A．Blocks. | B．Boosts. | C．Inspires. | D．Strengthens. |
| A．man | B．store | C．work | D．boy |
| A．The tasks were very difficult for participants to finish. |
| B．All participants were exposed to two different types of music. |
| C．Music with famous lyrics didn’t harm participants’ creativity. |
| D．Library background noises hardly affected participants’ creativity. |
【推荐3】Parrots live extremely long partly due to their relatively large brains, an international team of researchers has discovered. Simeon Smeele, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, led the study, the results of which were published in March in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
When it comes to lifespan (寿命), birds truly stand out. Lifespan tends to increase with an animal’s body size, roughly speaking. Thus, the bigger the animal, the longer they live. But a bird tends to live much longer than a comparably-sized mammal (哺乳动物). One theory is that birds’ ability to fly means they are less at risk from the animals that kill them, which reduces their risk of being eaten, decreases stress, and frees up bodily resources for growth.
And among birds, parrots are the aging champions. The confirmed longest living bird was Cookie, a Major Mitchell’s cockatoo (a species of parrot), who lived at the Brookfield Zoo in Illinois for all but one of his 83 years. Though cockatoos often weigh around a pound, they usually live for four decades. Most of the other 398 parrot species also live longer than other birds of similar size.
What sets parrots apart? In the new research, Smeele and his colleagues gathered data on over 130,000 individual parrots held in more than 1,000 zoos, representing 217 species. Through this data, they created reliable estimates of the average lifespan for each species. They next searched for a link between each species’ lifespan and its relative brain size and found a clear, positive correspondence. Parrot species with larger brains relative to their body size lived longer than species with smaller brains.
“This supports the idea that in general larger brains make species more flexible and allow them to live longer,” Smeele said in a statement. “For example, if they run out of their favorite food, they could learn to find something new and thus survive.” He added, “All parrots have relatively large brain sizes compared to most other birds.”
Researchers have previously shown that, when trained, some parrots can recognize and understand objects, colors, and shapes, and even speak with an impressive vocabulary. They can even match five-year-old humans on basic tests of intelligence.
1. What may cause birds’ long life?| A．Their big body size. | B．Their ability to fly. |
| C．Their less adventurous nature. | D．Their slow-paced lifestyle. |
| A．They outlive other similar-sized birds. |
| B．They live longer in the zoo than in the wild. |
| C．They have an average lifespan of four decades. |
| D．They live in relatively less competitive environments. |
| A．Goal. | B．Evidence. | C．Difference | D．Connection. |
| A．Parrots find it hard to survive nowadays. |
| B．Bigger brains give parrots more adaptability(适应性). |
| C．Parrots like to discover new things by nature. |
| D．Bigger brains aid parrots with their social ability. |
【推荐1】Down the Central Valley in California, the roads are still destroyed by rainwater and farms are still flooded. But the benefits of the state’s destructively wet winter are on full display: a sea of colorful wild flowers spreading across the landscape like a wonderful painting.
“This is definitely one of the benefits to a wet year like we just had,” said Gabe Garcia, the head of the Bureau of Land Management. “Last year, this area looked like a lifeless desert. Now the flowers reach my knees.”
But the new life comes at the expense of thousands of Californians who have suffered in recent months. Estimates for economic damages from a series of storms in early January alone are in the billions of dollars. The state has already declared states of emergencies for 47 counties since the start of February.
“When you’re driving through the Central Valley and see water spread across the landscape, you’ll think of this as a really negative thing. However, I try to look at it as opportunities,” said Carson Jeffres, a researcher at the University of California. “It is an opportunity to show the value of wetlands in flood control during wet years like this. Most important of all, it is an opportunity to see what once it was.”
For centuries, Native Americans have learned to live in harmony with nature. But the landscape has been dramatically changed. Most wetlands have been long cut from the rivers and streams that nourished (滋养) them. Snow water from the southern Sierra Nevada mountains is channeled to a vast network of farms. The big floods are just recreating the wetlands that were here historically.
“This year, the few remaining wetlands are getting their share of water up and down the Central Valley, helping reduce the flood risks to the towns and farms that are slowly displacing them.” he continued.
1. What can we learn about the Central Valley in California?| A．It was extraordinarily dry in history. |
| B．It seemed like a lifeless desert last year. |
| C．It is usually very wet in winter and spring. |
| D．It is known for colorful flowers every year. |
| A．The flower. | B．The wetland. | C．The desert. | D．The flood. |
| A．The wetlands’ great value. | B．The damages caused by floods. |
| C．The mismanagement of the farms. | D．The sufferings for Native Americans. |
| A．It is a good time to visit California now. |
| B．We should see bad things in a positive light. |
| C．We should learn to live in harmony with nature. |
| D．More lands should be returned to Native Americans. |
Around the world, people changed sleep patterns thanks to the start or end of daylight savings time. Russians, for example, began to wake up about a half-hour later each day after President Vladimir Putin shifted the country permanently to “winter time”starting on October 36.
Russia’s other late nights and early mornings generally correspond to public holidays. On New Year’s Eve, Russians have the world’s latest bedtime, hitting the hay at around 3:30 am.
Russians also get up an hour later on International Women’s Day, the day for treating and celebrating female relatives.
Similarly, Americans’ late nights late mornings, and longest sleeps fall on three-day weekends.
Canada got the least sleep of the year the night it beat Sweden in the Olympic hockey(冰球）final.
The World Cup is also chiefly responsible for sleep deprivation(剥夺）, The worst night for sleep in the U.K. was the night of the England-Italy match on June 15. Brits stayed up a half-hour later to watch it, and then they woke up earlier than usual the next morning thanks to summer nights, the phenomenon in which the sun barely sets in northern countries in the summertime. That was nothing, though, compared to Germans, Italians, and the French, who stayed up around an hour and a half later on various days throughout the summer to watch the Cup.
It should be made clear that not everyone has a device to record their sleep patterns, in some of these nations, it’s likely that only the richest people do. And people who elect to track their sleep may try to get more sleep than the average person. Even if that’s the case, though, the above findings are still striking, If the most health-conscious among us have such deep swings in our shut-eye levels throughout the year, how much sleep are the rest of us losing?
1. What does the author say about people’s sleeping habits?
| A．They are culture-related . |
| B．They affect people’s health |
| C．They change with the seasons. |
| D．They vary from person to person. |
| A．They don’t sleep much on weekends. |
| B．They get less sleep on public holidays |
| C．They don’t fall asleep until very late. |
| D．They sleep longer than people elsewhere. |
| A．They are involved in a sleep research. |
| B．They have trouble falling asleep. |
| C．They want to get sufficient sleep. |
| D．They want to go to bed on regular hours. |
| A．Sleeplessness does harm to people’s health. |
| B．Few people really know the importance of sleep. |
| C．It is important to study our sleep patterns. |
| D．Average people probably sleep less than the rich. |
【推荐3】Kim Hyo Jin, a shy junior high school student, stood before her American teacher. The smiling teacher held up a green pepper and asked in clear English: “What is this?”
“Peemang!” answered the South Korean teenager, who then covered her mouth with a hand as if to stop — too late — the Korean word that had left her mouth.
Embarrassed, she tried again. Without looking the teacher in the eye, she held both her hands out and asked, this time in English: “May I have green pepper?”
Kim took the vegetable with a bow, and ran back to her classmates, feeling relieved that she had successfully taken a small first step toward overcoming what South Koreans consider one of their biggest weaknesses in global competitiveness: the fear of speaking in English to westerners.
Kim was among 300 junior high school students going through a weeklong training in this new “English Village.” The complex looks like a mini-town transplanted from a European country to this South Korean countryside. It has its own immigration office, city hall, bookstore, cafeteria, gym, a main street with Western storefronts, police officers and a live-in population of 160 native English speakers. All signs are in English, the only language allowed.
Here, on a six-day course that charges each student 80,000 won, or $82, pupils check in to a hotel, shop, take cooking lessons and make music videos — all in English. There are language policemen around, punishing students speaking Korean with a fine in the village currency or red dots on their village passports.
South Korea has become one of the most aggressive countries in Asia at teaching English to its citizens. Outside the school system, parents are paying an estimated 10 trillion won a year to help their children learn English at home or abroad. Nevertheless, many college graduates are afraid of chatting with native speakers. That, linguists say, is a result of a national school system that traditionally stresses reading and memorization of English grammar and vocabulary at the expense of conversation.
In Korea University of Seoul, 30 percent of all classes are now in English. Speaking English with a native accent has become a status symbol.
1. What was Kim Hyo Jin’s problem?| A．She spoke English with a Korean accent. |
| B．She dared not talk with westerners in English. |
| C．She was afraid of looking at her English teacher. |
| D．She kept staying with her Korean classmates. |
| A．It is located in a European country. |
| B．It houses 460 Korean students in a week. |
| C．Students will be punished for not speaking English. |
| D．Students take turns to serve as language policemen. |
| A．There aren’t enough English classes given to students. |
| B．Students don’t have enough chances to practise speaking. |
| C．Emphasis is placed on students’ ability to communicate. |
| D．Grammar and vocabulary is taught by old-fashioned methods. |
| A．Let’s Read in English | B．English as a Global Language |
| C．A Hunger for English Lessons | D．Change in Koreans’ Attitude to English |
