【推荐1】Nature soothes(抚慰)our stressed-out souls. We know that nature is the best prescription, and new research suggests we can gain benefits while visiting parks.

    1    The study published in the International Journal of Environmental Health Research found that spending 20 minutes in a city park can make you happier, regardless of whether you use that time to exercise or not.

"In general,we found park visitors reported an improvement in emotional well-being(幸福感)after the park visit.”the study's lead author and University of Alabama at Birmingham professor Hon K. Yuen said in a statement.“    2    ”Instead, we found time spent in the park is related to improved emotional well-being.”

For the study, 94 adults visited three city parks in Mountain Brook, Alabama, completing a questionnaire about their subjective well-being before and after their visit.     3     A visit of between 20 and 25 minutes showed the best results, with a roughly 64% increase in the participants' self-reported well-being, even if they didn't move a great deal in the park.     4    

The study group was truly small. as the study's co-author and another UAB professor, Gavin Jenkins, acknowledges.     5    The challenge facing cities is that there is increasing evidence about the value of city parks but we continue to see the decrease of these spaces.

A．Something was used to track their physical activity.

B．You usually visit a small green space in your neighborhood.

C．However, its findings pointed out the importance of city parks.

D．If you want to feel happier, you just need to exercise for 20 minutes in a park.

E．The best part is that you needn't visit a national park or go far out of your way.

F．This means people can benefit from visiting a nearby park, regardless of physical ability.

G．But we didn't find levels of physical activity are linked to improved emotional well-being.

【推荐2】Sport is very popular in England. In other words lots of English people like the idea of sport． A lot watch sport on TV． But the number who take part in（参加）sport is quite small． On the whole English people prefer to be fat rather than thin．
The most popular sport in England is football． Football is played on Saturday afternoon in most towns and the supporters（球迷）of a certain team will travel from one end of the country to the other to see their team play． There are four divisions（级别）of the football league．Not surprisingly the best teams are in the first division． But the best supporters are often in the fourth division． You have to be a good supporter to watch the fourth division football!
Many other sports are also played in England, such as golf, in which you try to knock a ball into a hole; basketball, in which you try to got a ball through a net（篮筐）; tennis, in which you try to hit a ball so that your opponent（对手）can not hit it． As you see, if the ball had not been invented, there would have been no sport．
　　Actually（其实）, that is not quite true． Athletics（田径）isn’t played with a ball; nor horseracing（赛马）． Perhaps that is why they are not so popular as football!
1. ________ is the most popular sport in England．

A．Basketball

B．Football

C．Golf

D．Tennis

2. You have to be a good supporter to watch ______division football．

A．the first

B．the second

C．the third

D．the fourth

3. Why do many English people not take part in sport?

A．They are too busy．

B．They like watching sport on TV．

C．They would like to be fat．

D．They prefer to be thin．

4. Why are English people interested in sport?

A．They have their football team．

B．The sport games are played on Saturday afternoon．

C．They like the idea of sport．

D．They like the famous players．

【推荐3】A new urban sport, parkour, is hitting the streets. It has evolved from obstacle course training into a fitness option for young people. In parkour, the outside world is the gym!     1     The goal of parkour is a direct route from one place to another. You meet an obstacle, you overcome it.

Mark Toorock, who teaches the techniques of parkour at his fitness gym, says that parkour is a method to train the body and mind using obstacles as the medium. He says that this new sport is demanding and takes years to master.     2    

But Toorock, who used to be a martial arts expert, says that everyone can benefit from learning the basic skills involved in parkour like running, jumping and crawling (爬行). These are the things that humans used to have to do all the time.     3     The original idea of parkour was to return to running and jumping as basic elements in moving from one place to another.

Georges Hebert, a French navy officer, was so impressed by the effortless athleticism of African tribes that he devised a training method based on running, climbing, jumping, balancing and throwing. The word parkour comes from parcours de combatant, the French term for a military obstacle course.     4    

Dr Kenneth Kao explains that the sport of parkour is not extreme — it is the environment which is extreme and dangerous. Being outside, jumping off railings and flipping over park benches can be quite frightening, so parkour courses in gyms concentrate on practicing all the individual moves to make everything easier.     5     However, that is not real parkour because it’s indoors with a fixed obstacle. The goal for everyone is to go outdoors.

A．Gyms provide thick floor matting (垫子) for rolling and rubberized boxes for jumping over.

B．The bridges, buildings and railings (栏杆) of each and every city are the equipment.

C．Every action in parkour is natural, so everyone must have the ability to move in this way.

D．Parkour was introduced into china in recent years and has gained popularity.

E．But today, due to modern transport, these basic skills are no longer used on a regular basis.

F．The French word for people who participate in the sport is traceurs or traceuses.

G．Beginners should realize that they won’t be jumping over buildings any time soon!

【推荐1】Humans have launched themselves into the outer space. They've landed on the moon. They've built habitable space stations that orbit the Earth. The next giant leap for mankind is to reach another planet–specifically, Mars.

The problem is that it's no easy task. The planet is 586 times further away from the Earth than the moon, and it'll take around 180 to 220 days to reach Mars, depending on where each planet is in its orbit. Such long periods in space have suggested many potential health problems, including hormonal changes, skin conditions, and muscle and bone deterioration (损耗).

Here's where some furry friends come in. A wide range of animals have been in space, from fruit flies and spiders to cats, and dogs. Such experiments began as far back as the late 1940s in first tests to see if living things could withstand the extreme g-force (重力) of a rocket launch.

Mice continue to play a very important part in space experiments, mainly because the animals make excellent test subjects. They're small, which makes them inexpensive and easy to care for. In addition, their size and short life span make it possible to do the equivalent of several human years of tests in a much shorter time. Finally, because mice are mammals, they share many common characteristics with humans in terms of genetics, biology and behavior.

Astromice have hit the headlines recently, as a team of scientists led by Betty Nusgens, professor of biology at the University of Liege in Belgium, found that the mice suffered a 15 percent thinning of their skin after 91 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

This experiment was part of a wider NASA mission (任务) called the Mice Drawer System (MDS). The Italian Space Agency developed the facility, which allows six mice to be housed, monitored, and automatically fed and watered aboard the ISS, among which three survived during the mission.

The mice have participated in 20 separate experiments, to study such effects as osteoporosis (骨质疏松症), anemia (贫血) and heart health.

Results for the 20 experiments are coming in gradually. But it's clear that mice continue to play an important role in the ongoing quest to conquer the final frontier.

1. We can infer from Paragraphs 2-3 that ______.

A．Mars is the farthest planet away from Earth discovered so far

B．animals that have been sent into space have mostly survived

C．it was in the late 1940s that animals were first sent to the ISS

D．he journey to Mars could put humans' health at risk

2. The underlined word "withstand"in Para.3 means _________.

A．set up	B．hold up
C．work out	D．come across

3. According to Betty Nusgens and her team, the mice aboard the ISS ______.

A．suffered the loss of part of their skin

B．all survived for the duration of the mission

C．were fed and watered by the astronauts

D．participated in 20 experiments that made great breakthroughs

4. The main purpose of the article is to _____.

A．describe the role mice play in scientific research

B．report on the results of the Mice Drawer System

C．analyze how mice could pave the way to Mars

D．change people's traditional attitudes toward mice

【推荐2】If you’ve ever found yourself scratching your head over a decision when the answer is obvious, now there’s a scientific reason behind it. “The problem is ‘decision fatigue’ — a psychological phenomenon that influences the quality of your choices after a long day of decision making, causing indecision or poor choices.” says Evan Polman, a leading psychologist.

Physicians who have been on the job for several hours, for example, are more likely to prescribe antibiotics (开抗生素) to patients when it's unwise to do so. “Probably it’s because it’s simple and easy to write a prescription and consider a patient case closed rather than investigate further,” Polman says.

But interestingly, decision fatigue goes away when you are making the decision for someone else. When people imagine themselves as advisers and imagine their own choices as belonging to someone else, they feel less tired and rely less on decision shortcuts to make those choices. “By taking upon the role of adviser rather than decision maker, one does not suffer the consequences of decision fatigue,” he says. “It’s as if there’s something fun and relieving about making someone else’s choice.”

“Getting input from others not only offers a fresh idea and thought process; it often also includes riskier choices. While this sounds undesirable, it can be quite good,” says Polman. “When people experience decision fatigue, they have a tendency to choose to go with the status quo (现状),” he says. “But the status quo can be problematic, since a change in the course of action can sometimes be important and lead to a positive outcome.” In order to achieve a successful outcome or reward, some level of risk is almost always essential. “People with decision fatigue will likely choose to do nothing over something,” he says, “That’s not to say that risk is always good, but it is related to taking action whereas decision fatigue certainly leads to inaction.”

“Just because you can make good choices for others doesn’t mean you’ll do the same for yourself,” Polman cautions. “Research has found that women negotiate higher salaries for others than they do for themselves,” he says, adding that people slip in and out of decision roles.

1. Decision fatigue may cause people to make decisions that are_______________.

A．reasonable	B．objective
C．unwise	D．smart

2. Which of the following may be made by a person with decision fatigue?

A．A consumer buys a lot of food to prepare for a dinner.

B．A judge makes a less convincing judgment late in the day.

C．A student plans to finish his math homework in the morning.

D．A physician advises the patient to drink more water after examination.

3. When do people feel less decision fatigue?

A．When they take decision shortcuts.

B．When they have advisers to turn to.

C．When they have major decisions to make.

D．When they help others to make decisions.

4. What are people likely to do when decision fatigue sets in?

A．They stop trying anything new.

B．They adopt a totally new idea.

C．They tend to make risky decisions.

D．They turn to physicians for advice.

5. What does Polman say about taking some risks in decision making?

A．It will often end in regret.

B．It is likely to cause serious consequences.

C．It will enable people to be more creative.

D．It is necessary to achieve successful outcome.

【推荐3】Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.

Feel Young at Heart and You’ll Enjoy a Longer Life

Age-liars and birthday-deniers, you’d best learn a thing or two from those who are young at heart. People who feel younger than their actual age may live longer than those who feel older than they truly are, a new study says.

    1    Results from the study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggest that people who feel a year or more older than they truly are could have around 41 percent greater risk for death.

Researchers looked at nearly 6,500 older adults, with an average age of 65.8 for they study. Around 70 percent of them felt younger than they were, about a quarter felt their precise age and just under 5 percent felt a year or more older they were, when asked “How old do you feel you are?”

Those who felt older than they were had a higher death rate after a follow-up period of 99 months. While just 14.3 and 18.5 percent of people who felt younger or felt their age, respectively, died during those 99 months, 24.6 percent of those who felt aged beyond their years had died.

The authors say more research is needed on the topic, but suggest it could be that those who feel “young at heart” have healthier behaviors and a stronger will to live. “     2    Individuals who feel older could be targeted with health message promoting positive health behaviors and attitudes toward aging,” the authors write in the study.

The good news is that you can change your feeling of how young you are.     3    One recent study found that helping participants have positive feelings toward age, by showing them positive word associations, helped older adults improve in physical tasks like balancing and getting up out of a chair, in as little as four weeks. Another study found that negative feeling of aging and poor memory can make older adults feel up to five years older, regardless of their actual mental abilities.

There you have it.     4     .

A．Age really should be treated as just a number

B．Felt age might play a role in more than just how you feel

C．Feeling young is about maintaining vitality as you get older.

D．Self-felt age has the potential to change, so interventions(干预)may be possible.

E．And other studies suggest that there could be more benefits to thinking yourself younger, besides a longer life.

F．People who feel younger than the number of years they have on the clock get more pleasure than people who feel their age.