【推荐1】“Don’t get sick in July!”

This is a common concern in teaching hospitals in the U.S. It’s driven by the academic calendar: July is when the new interns, fresh out of medical school, start work. In other words, it’s when everyone is most ________. The theory is that this disadvantage leads to mistakes.

So is medical experience good or bad? Well, in most cases, your doctor’s experience is very helpful, allowing her to pick up on a(n) ________ symptom early in a disease process, when machines still can’t take a hand. She can also determine the right treatment when your condition falls outside of what is in the ________, where newbies get most of their ideas. For many medical treatments, there’s a direct connection between physician experience and your treating outcome.

In a variety of situations, though, experience can backfire. The reason is simple ________. Doctors are humans too and they ________ tricks of the mind—like believing that an ineffective treatment really works. In fact, entire fields of research are devoted to understanding why these errors of thought occur. They ________ from so-called cognitive prejudice that can mislead even ________ practitioners into making the wrong decisions.

Doctors are usually locked onto a diagnosis early and disregard new and ________ information. For example, a patient may be diagnosed with a quickly fatal cancer, but then ends up trying various herbal remedies and lives for 30 more years. Instead of analyzing the ________ diagnosis, the patient, and maybe even the doctor, may assume that the herbal remedies cured the cancer.

Also, some experienced doctors tend to believe evidence when it supports their previous opinion while subconsciously ignoring information opposing it. Let’s say your doctor is pretty certain you have ill digestion and orders a test to________ the suspicion, which produces negative result. But she treats you for ill digestion anyway because she was ________ with the prior diagnosis by experience.

In fact, there are clearly many benefits to having a highly experienced doctor, such as technical proficiency. But there may actually be some unexpected benefits to having a less-experienced one too. She may have a more up-to-date education, boundless energy and perhaps is less vulnerable to biases, freed from the same ________ for years.

To safeguard yourself as a patient, one thing you should always do is ________. It may not always be possible to determine that your doctor has met with an unconscious thinking ________. But asking questions does force your doctor to think twice and ________ her decision about your case.

【推荐2】What the scientists are saying…

The first primate (灵长目动物) clones

For the first time, scientists have used the technique that produced Dolly the sheep to clone monkeys. The Chinese researchers who produced the two macaques say that having access to genetically identical primates will be a huge ____ to medical research. It will give scientists a clearer understanding of genetic ____ by enabling them to compare animals who are identical except for one tweaked gene; when ____ drugs, it will make it possible to rule out the possibility that variations in outcomes are down to genetic ____. But other experts have raised a host of ____. The somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) technique involves ____ a cell nucleus to a donated nucleus-free egg that is then prompted to develop into an embryo(胚胎). Although 23 species have been cloned in this way, primates have only been cloned before using a less complex embryo-splitting technique. Similar to the process that creates twins, it can only lead to a very ____ number of genetically identical individuals. SCNT can in ____ lead to a far larger number of clones, but in the Chinese experiment, the fail rate was very high. The team implanted scores of embryos, but only two monkeys survived beyond a few days. ____ to that is the concern that by cloning a primate species, the team has broken down a significant ____ on the way to cloning humans.

Herbal remedy danger

Herbal remedies such as St. John’s wort and ginseng may be ___ when used alongside conventional drugs, reports The Guardian. In a review of medical literature, researchers at Stellenbosch University in South Africa found several __ of alternative treatments appearing to ____ with prescription drugs, resulting in potentially dangerous side effects. In one case, the autopsy (解剖) of a 55-year-old who died while swimming concluded that the ginkgo biloba supplements he had been taking may have ____ his anti-seizure (防止发作) medicine. Other cases documented patients on statins appearing to suffer complications linked to flaxseed, St. John’s wort and green tea. “If you are taking herbal remedies, you should ____it to your clinician,” said one of the report’s authors, Dr Charles Awortwe.

【推荐3】I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes(糖尿病) in 2017. And then I was told that I couldn’t ___for a few weeks until my blood sugar levels had _______.

Driving was a _______very soon after diagnosis for me. I needed to get to the chemist’s shop for my diabetes _______and to hospital appointments, but initially couldn’t ---- having been told not to drive. I didn’t want to be a ______ -----having to ask for lifts all the time.

I found it really ______ to be unable to drive, but things settled down after that and seemed to be_______ -----for a while.______, to my surprise, I had a severe hypoglycemia(低血糖) last year and wasn’t able to _______it myself. I called an ambulance and was taken to ______, where I saw doctors and nurses I didn’t ______as none of them were connected to the diabetes team who usually cared for me. That’s where my _______began----- they advised me not to drive on the basis of this ______. They told me to call the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency(DVLA) and _______what they’d told me to them. This _______my license being withdrawn.

I couldn’t ______ all that had happened---- it seemed ______. I needed answers and ______, so I phoned the Diabetes UK Helpline number I got from their website. They ______ I was right in thinking that the DVLA shouldn’t have ______ my license based on this hypoglycemia, according to the law. With their help, the DVLA sent me a letter admitting making a mistake. I got it back in six weeks.

【推荐2】Dogs are often said to look like their owners, but the breed someone chooses could also reveal key aspects of their personality, psychologists claim.

They found that people _______ different types of dog depending on their lifestyle and character, though they typically don’t realize it.

Corgi owners, such as the Queen, tend to be extroverted, _______ Sir Isaac Newton’s Pomeranian could have signaled that he was creative and intelligent, the study suggested. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s choice of a cocker spaniel puppy, Lupo, may _______ that they are agreeable and conscientious, while owners of greyhounds and beagles are more likely to be emotionally stable.

This could be because, like in a romantic relationship, we tend to _______ ourselves with pets that we feel we share something in common with, researchers from Bath Spa University found.

It could also _______ our lifestyle, with active dogs like retrievers and greyhounds appealing more to people who enjoy spending time _______, they added.

Dr. Lance Workman and Jo Fearon surveyed 1,000 dog owners via an online questionnaire on behalf of the Kennel Club.

The questions were designed to test the so-called “Big Five” traits that _______ our personality: extroversion, agreeableness, emotional stability, conscientiousness and intelligence.   

Dr. Workman said there was a definite link between a dog’s _______ and their owner’s personality. “I think when you look for a dog at some level, largely _______, you look for something that is a bit like you,” he said. “It’s a bit like a romantic partner. If they ________ they will probably last, and contrary to popular opinion, with romantic partners opposites don’t attract—you need to have a lot ________ if it’s going to last.”

But it also has to suit your lifestyle, he added. If you’re going to get a(n) ________ breed, you need to be an outdoor type person.

Someone’s choice of dog could also reveal ________ personality traits that do not immediately come across from watching them or listening to them speak.

The Queen’s ________ for corgis, for example, may signal that she is more extroverted than she appears to be, Dr. Workman explained.

He said, “It takes a lot to get up and stand up in front of the number of people she does as often as she does, and give a good talk, and at the same time she has to be controlled as the head of state. ________ the minor royals can party, she’s never been able to do that, so I think the personality that we see appears less extroverted than she actually is.”

【推荐3】After my public lectures on evolution, someone in the audience asks, “Are we still evolving?” People want to know if humans are getting taller, smarter, better looking or more athletic. My answer is truthful but _______: We’re almost certainly evolving, but we don’t know in what _______ or how fast.

We’ve seen some evolution in our species over the past few millennia, but it was detected by reconstructing history from DNA sequences. For example, we know that during the past 10,000 years, several populations of humans — those keeping sheep, cows or goats for milk— gained the ability to digest dairy products. This quality was _______ in our earlier ancestors who, after babyhood, never encountered milk. And in the past 3,000 years, Tibetans have acquired _______ adaptations that allowed them to develop well in their high-altitude, low-oxygen home. But these well-documented changes are limited to particular populations, so the _______ for recent evolution of our entire species, remains not much.

The authors of “Evolving Ourselves” _______. Not only, they claim, are we evolving faster than ever, but we’re doing it to ourselves. Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans argue that humans have _______ evolution — not just in our own species but virtually in all species: “For better or worse, we are increasingly in charge. We are the primary drivers of _______. We will directly and indirectly determine what lives, what dies, where, and when. We are in a different phase of evolution: the future of life is now _______.”

According to the authors, we’ve replaced natural selection with what they call “________selection.” Overfishing, for example, has reduced the average size of many fish species, for taking the biggest fishes is ________ those smaller fishes.

Yet while there’s no doubt that we’re changing the planet, the claim that we’re completely changing evolution on the planet ________. Let’s take those fish that are evolving to reproduce smaller and younger for example. This ________ has been documented in many species that we eat, but this is just a minuscule fraction (极小的一部分) of the 30,000 known species of fish.

The authors speak with ________ assurance about how our species is evolving in response to nearly everything. When they claim, for example, our ingestion (摄取) of drugs and exposure to chemicals mean that “our children’s brains are evolving fast,” they are abusing (滥用) the word “________.” Our children’s brains may be changing fast in response to the new pharmacological (药理学的) environment, but change alone is not evolution.

【推荐3】For centuries, people have had a strong sense that it is absolutely beneficial to read fairy tales to children. However, the benefits might have been ____. Some researchers are reassessing this long-established belief and after years of surveys and observations, they are sending out the message: reading too much Cinderella to your daughter may ____ damage her in later life. A paper to be developed at the international congress of cognitive psychotherapy (认知心理疗法) suggests a link between the ____ of women abused (虐待) by their partners and early exposure to the wrong sort of fairy tales. It says girls who ____ Cinderella, Rapunzel and Beauty in Beauty and the Beast were more likely to stay in ____ relationships as adults.

The theory was developed by Susan Darker Smith, a psychotherapist at the University of Derby. She interviewed sixty-seven female abuse survivors and found that sixty-one ____severe abuse because they believed they could change their partners with patience and love. The same view was ____ by male survivors who had been abused as children. Hardly any of the women and men in a control group, who had not ____ abuse, thought they could change their partners in this way. These women and men said they would ____ a relationship rather than suffer the abuse from a partner. Ms. Darker Smith found that these abused women were much more likely to sympathize with Cinderella and other female characters who tended to obey instead of ____.

Although most girls heard the stories, damage appeared to be done to those who ____the characters as role models. “They believe if their love is strong enough they can change their partners’ ____,” she said. “____ in children to stories that emphasize the transformational qualities of love may make women believe they can change their partners.” For example, they might never have understood the obvious ____ in the story of Rapunzel, who remained locked in a high tower until rescued by a knight on a white horse, who broke the door down. “The question,” said Ms. Darker Smith, “is why she did not break the door by herself? After all, being ____ is a desirable characteristic that children should learn to possess from the early age and prevail in the life time. ”