As race season approaches, many runners have the same goal: go faster. But in a study published in the journal Current Biology, researchers show that speeding up might require us to resist our natural biology. By combining data from runners monitored in a lab along with 37,000 runs recorded on wearable fitness trackers, scientists have found that humans’ natural tendency is to run at a speed that conserves caloric loss—something that racers seeking to shave time off their miles will have to get over.
The research group have been studying the mechanics of running in labs for 15 years but hadn’t gotten a chance to study running in the wild before. “We joined the two datasets to gain new insights and combine the more messy wearable data with the gold standard lab experiments to learn about how people run out,” says co-author Jennifer Hicks.
What surprised the team was the consistency they found across the combined datasets. “We had assumed earlier that people ran faster for shorter distances and then would slow their pace for longer distances,” says first author Jessica Selinger. But this wasn’t the case. Most of the runners analyzed stuck with the same speed, whether they were going for a short run or a long one over ten kilometers.
From an evolutionary (进化) standpoint, it makes sense that people would run at the speed that uses the least amount of energy. This caloric conservation is something that has been observed across the animal kingdom. But humans’ reasons for running have changed, and if the goal is speed, there are some tricks runners can use.
Listening to music with a faster pace has been shown to help speed up stride (步伐) frequency, which increases running speed. In addition, picking faster running partners can give you a boost.
Hicks hopes that having large pools of fitness data from wearables will help researchers gain insights about populations. “You can look at connections with the built environment and access to leisure resources and start to layer all of that data to really understand how to improve physical activity and health more broadly,” says Hicks.
1. What do the racers have to overcome during the race?| A．Energy consumption. | B．Muscle loss. |
| C．Weakness of humanity. | D．Lack of nutrients. |
| A．People would run in the wild rather than in labs. |
| B．People adjust their speeds to different distances. |
| C．People run at a constant speed regardless of distance. |
| D．People possess enormous potential for running faster. |
| A．To offer tips on speed increase. |
| B．To evaluate the advantages of running. |
| C．To explain the importance of fast running. |
| D．To reveal the change in human running goals. |
| A．Unclear. | B．Critical. | C．Doubtful. | D．Favorable. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Accompanied by her father, using a combination of aid and free climbing and taking advantage of some special equipment and ropes for protection, 10-year-old Selah made it to the top of El Capitan on June 12 after five days of big wall climbing.
Climbing the challenging and adventurous Nose route of El Capitan was a labor of love for Selah in more than one way. Her parents , Mike and Joy Schneiter, fell in love on this 3,000- plus-foot huge rock and she has always wanted to feel the way that her parents felt when they were up there together. Selah showed great interest in rock climbing at an early age. She wore her first rock-climbing equipment shortly after she learned to walk. She first dreamed of climbing El Capitan when she was 6 or 7.
El Capitan is a famous mountain-sized rock in Yosemite National Park. Getting to its top is no easy task. It's taller, as reported, than the tallest building in the world-Dubai’s Buri Khalifa. El Capitan and its difficult Nose route, which runs more than 3,000 feet high up the center of the rock's face, is considered one of the world's hardest big wall climbs and has attracted the best climbers over time. But never before had a youngster accomplished it.
Selah's achievement caught national attention. Outside Magazine called her the youngest documented person to climb the Nose. Ken Yager, president of the Yosemite Climbing Association, said he also couldn't think of anyone younger who has done it.
Selah is humble about her El Capitan accomplishment. "I'm not necessarily a special kid or anything like that, she said. "There were a few times when I would be so worn that it would kind of discourage me from holding on. But overall, it was just great to keep plugging away.”
Selah shared this advice for other young climbers dreaming of big walls, "It doesn't take necessarily a super special person to do something like that. You just have to put your mind to it.”
1. What do we learn about Selah climbing El Capitan?| A．She began her climbing on June 5. |
| B．She got inspired by her family history. |
| C．She managed without any external help. |
| D．She was the first female to reach the top. |
| A．To state El Capitan's height. |
| B．To prove El Capitan's popularity. |
| C．To introduce El Capitan's location. |
| D．To stress the challenge of climbing El Capitan. |
| A．Determined. | B．Generous. |
| C．Warm-hearted. | D．Fortunate. |
| A．Dream big and aim high. |
| B．Be committed to your ambition. |
| C．Chance favors the prepared mind. |
| D．Nothing is impossible for a genius. |
【推荐2】Staying fit is a great way to improve your mood and physical health. With some simple tricks, you can stay fit for years to come!
Start walking, jogging or cycling
No matter what your speed is, walking, jogging and cycling are very important parts of a healthy lifestyle.
Come up with a daily walking, jogging or cycling routine that fits with your schedule first. After a while you can increase your distance, speed and the length of your workout.
Exercise in the classroom .
Not everyone has the time or money to go to the gym and there is no need to.
Sit-ups. Sit-ups can be done by simply laying on the ground or with a chair or exercise ball.
Push-ups.
Join a school sports team
Joining a school sports team may be a great way to get outside, move around and have some fun!
| A．Go out of your way to walk more |
| B．The most popular school sports are basketball and football |
| C．Working out in the classroom is very easy and can be very beneficial |
| D．If you like the gym atmosphere then the gym is a great place to stay fit |
| E．Use your weight against the floor or steps to work on your upper body strength |
| F．They are activities that keep your heart and lungs active and your blood flowing |
| G．Many schools have their own sports teams that meet and play in the after-school time |
【推荐3】Gyms that profit most from the January rush
Every year, like clockwork, many people go through the same routine. On December 26th and January 1st, as the fog of cheese, chocolate oranges and champagne lifts, regret creeps（悄悄出现）in. Online searches for “get fit” and “lose weight” increase.
Many gym recruits（新成员）will have their new sportswear on for high-intensity interval training. In the basement of Another Space, a club near London’s Leicester Square, music pumps and light flash as a trainer shouts instructions to a group of mostly young women. They are pushed through bursts of burpees, handclap push-ups and various kick and punches at boxing bags. The training is murderous.
They are at one end of a fitness market.
Pure Gym expects soon to reach 1 million members. Part of its appeal is that, unlike traditional gyms, members are not bound by a long contract. “We have taken a £500 decision and turned it into a £20 decision,” says Mr Cobbold.
| A．There will be other ripple effects（连锁反应）, too. |
| B．That will be good news for some gym goers because many will soon suffer a second round of regret. |
| C．However, the club’s luxurious changing rooms and bars relieve some of the pain. |
| D．Health clubs of all shapes and sizes stand ready to respond. |
| E．Spending on fashion items also increases around the time of joining a gym. |
| F．At the other are budget gyms, which have accounted for the big part of gym growth in recent years. |
【推荐1】“Can you say mama? Or dada?” If you’ve spent any time around a baby, chances are you’ve heard or said things like these.
Baby talk is an important piece of speech and language development. Studies show that when babies are exposed to such talk every day throughout their first year of life, they develop stronger vocabularies than other kids. And the little ones are eager for it.
Child-directed speech wasn’t always valued. Before the middle of the 20th century, researchers largely ignored it as a subject of study. Until the early 1990s, many developmental psychologists and linguists believed that without any help, we would learn how to speak and form complete sentences by ourselves.
But over the past few decades, numerous studies have found that throughout their first year of life, when babies are regularly exposed to such talk in addition to normal speech, they process, learn, and remember words presented to them in singsong tones (语调) better. One reason may have to do with how babies interact with the world.
| A．Baby talk tends to be spoken at a slower rate. |
| B．Humans aren’t the only ones that use baby talk. |
| C．They tend to ignore adult conversations and other background noises. |
| D．Luckily, parents can be taught methods to improve their parentese skills. |
| E．Some doctors even advised parents to avoid using baby talk, thinking it too silly. |
| F．The distinct tone of parentese catches their attention, allowing them to benefit from it. |
| G．The singsong tone we switch to when interacting with young children can have many names. |
【推荐2】Researchers say that they have understood the meaning of gestures that wild monkeys use to communicate.They say that wild monkeys can communicate 19 specific messages to one another with a “vocabulary” of 66 gestures.The scientists discovered this by following and filming groups of monkeys in Uganda, and examining more than 5,000 hours of recordings of these meaningful exchanges.
Dr Catherine Hobaiter, who led the research, said that this was the only form of intentional (有意识的) communication to have been recorded in the animal kingdom.Only humans and monkeys, she said, have a system of communication with which they sent a message to another group member on purpose.
Although previous research has shown that other animals can understand complex (复杂的) information from their partners’ call, they do not appear to use their voices intentionally to communicate messages.This was a significant difference between calls and gestures, Dr Hobaiter said. “They are the only thing that looks like human language in that respect,” she added.
In one case, a mother presents her foot to her crying baby, meaning “Climb on me.” The little monkey immediately jumps on to its mother’s back and they travel off together.” The important message from this study is that there is another species out there that can communicate in a meaningful way, so that’s not unique to humans.” said Dr. Hobaiter.
Dr. Susanne Shultz, a biologist from the University of Manchester, said the study was praiseworthy in seeking to enrich our knowledge of the evolution of human language. But, she added, the results were “a little disappointing”.
“The limited ‘vocabulary’ of the gestures suggests either that the monkeys have little to communicate, or we are still missing a lot of the information bidden in their gestures and responses.” she said. “In addition, the meanings seem to not go beyond what other animals communicate with their non verbal languages, So, it seems that difference still remains between human language and monkeys’ non verbal communication.”
1. According to Dr Hobaiter, only monkeys’ and humans can ______.| A．memorize specific words |
| B．understand complex information |
| C．use voices to communicate |
| D．communicate messages on purpose |
| A．Calls | B．Gestures. | C．Messages. | D．Voices. |
| A．It was well designed but poorly carried out. |
| B．It was a good try but the findings were limited. |
| C．The evidence was reliable but the conclusion isn’t new. |
| D．The result was disappointing and the methods were wrong. |
| A．The communication skills used by animals. |
| B．The smartest species in the animal kingdom. |
| C．A study on monkeys’ communication gestures. |
| D．A breakthrough in studying monkeys’ behaviors. |
【推荐3】As is often the case, you are trying hard to keep your eyes open in class after a late night doing piles and piles of homework, “
However, this is not correct.
Our body keeps a clock inside. It tells us when to wake up in the morning and when to feel sleepy at night. But the time on our body clock can be changed once we start taking on different sleeping habits.
If we decide to get up only 20 minutes or half an hour later, it won’t matter. This is because our body clock can accommodate(顺应) a delay of up to an hour, which means that a short lie-in at weekends is unlikely to have any big effect, we needn’t worry about it at all.
So, what should we do to balance and make up for all the sleep we’ve missed? Scientists say that simply eight hours of sleep would do the trick, not any longer.
| A．You are not alone. |
| B．I need more sleep! |
| C．Sleep is important for everyone. |
| D．Sleeping is nothing like paying back money. |
| E．However, if we sleep longer our sleep becomes less efficient. |
| F．But delays of up to two hours or more can throw our body out of order. |
| G．This is why staying in bed for longer than usual might confuse our body clock. |
【推荐1】An extinct mountain goat that was once common in the Pyrenees became the first animal to be brought back from extinction. Researchers used frozen DNA to produce a clone, but the newborn kid died within minutes of birth due to breathing difficulties.
The Pyrenean ibex is a type of mountain goat, which is believed to have died out completely in 2000. Before the death of the last known individual (a13-year-old female known as Celia), biologists took cells from her skin and ears. An earlier cloning attempt to use the skin cells failed. But the latest attempt involved the creation of 439 cloned embryos. Of these cloned embryos, 57 were put into the female domestic goats, but only one goat gave birth and the newborn cloned kid died after seven minutes as a result of lung disease.
Researchers say that other cloned animals, including sheep, have been born with similar lung disease, but they say that overall the experiment was a major step forward in the effort to bring the ibex back to its mountain home. The leading researcher Jose Folch says, “the cloned kid was genetically like the ibex; in species such as the ibex, cloning is the only possibility to avoid its complete disappearance.”
The failure to produce a living clone from DNA that was frozen only a decade ago shows the difficulty researchers would face in trying to bring back species that have been extinct (灭绝的) for decades or centuries. Researchers have had the idea of bringing back the Tasmanian tiger, which went extinct in 1936. There are, however, other species that have been seriously suggested for cloning, such as the giant panda, the African bongo antelope, the Sumatran tiger and the pygmy hippo. Supporters believe cloning provides hope of keeping these endangered animals alive before they die out.
1. What do we know about the cloned ibex?| A．It died of lung disease. |
| B．It was the first cloned animal in the world. |
| C．It lived for thirteen years. |
| D．It was born in 2000. |
| A．is not suitable and should be banned |
| B．requires immediate attention |
| C．should be carried out cautiously |
| D．may help prevent animal extinction |
| A．cloning has developed quickly in developed countries |
| B．no more animals will die out in the future |
| C．cloning makes it possible to preserve endangered species |
| D．cloning seldom results in physical problems for animals |
| A．Great advancement in cloning goats |
| B．Difficulties in saving extinct animals |
| C．Public concerns about cloning |
| D．Cloning brought back an extinct species for a while |
【推荐2】Antibiotics, vaccines, organ transplant and HIV/AIDS treatments are all medical milestones that have indisputably made life better and saved millions of lives. But all these advances and countless others were developed using animals. The latest eye shadow and other cosmetics and industrial chemicals are also developed with animal testing.
The lab animal issue has received attention in China in recent years as more people are concerned about animals’ rights. China has no animal welfare laws prohibiting cruelty to animals, but there are standards (1986 and 2006) for humane treatment of lab animals, though these are difficult to enforce.
World Day for Laboratory Animals was established in 1979 by the British National Anti-Vivisection Society, memorializing millions of animals that contributed to pure science, medicine, industry, fashion and the cosmetics industry. It’s also a day of action to protest the use of live animals for experiments from lab rats and dogs to cattle and primates (灵长类动物).
Thousands of activists worldwide are campaigning to raise awareness and demand an end to experimentation with animals, though there are few effective alternatives. The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection estimates that 100 million vertebrates (脊椎动物) are used in experiments every year, 10 to 11 million in the European Union. This doesn’t include mice, rats, frogs and animals not yet weaned. There are no reliable figures for China where specially bred animals are used extensively for research. Some date indicate around 16 million vertebrates were used in 2006.
Three Rs principle
The three Rs are principles for lab animal welfare proposed by microbiologist RL Burch and zoologist W.M.S. Russel in 1959. They are “reduction, refinement and replacement” and scientists are encouraged to follow them.
*Reduce the number of animals by improving experimental techniques and increasing information sharing among researchers.
*Refine experiments and treatment to reduce suffering; use less invasive techniques, improve care and living conditions.
*Replace experiments on live animals with alternative testing where possible.
“But the three Rs suggests general acquiescence (默许) in animal experimentation,” says astatement by Animal Rights in Chine (ARC), set up in 2006 by over 3000 campaigners who have been urging the use of alternatives.
The alternatives activists advocate include using cell cultures instead of whole animals, using phototoxicity tests on chemicals to predict their effects on humans, using computer models, studying human volunteers and working on isolated tissues. These approaches can be useful but they can’t provide the answers that animal research can.
“Animal experimentation is a basic, very important method in life science study and biomedical research and in some specific fields, so it is irreplaceable,” says Yang Fei, deputy director of the Animal Experimentation Department of Fudan University. Yang has worked on regulating and standardizing animal testing for over 15 years.
He says testing on primates is still necessary because their immune system is very similar to that of humans. They are needed to develop drugs for malaria, HIV/AIDS and infections such as SARS, he says, though admitting the approach is not perfect.
1. According to the passage, ______ may not be related to animal testing.| A．Cough mixtures | B．Genetically modified rice |
| C．Dior Lipsticks | D．Artificial livers |
| A．to call for better experimental techniques to reduce sufferings |
| B．to memorialize the animals sacrificed in the labs |
| C．to raise awareness of animal right |
| D．to offer the activists a chance to raise their objections to the use of animals’ forexperiments |
| A．Because researchers can better cooperate with each other to eliminate animal testing. |
| B．Because researchers can turn to alternatives to replace animal testing. |
| C．Because researchers can avoid repeating similar testing on animals. |
| D．Because researchers can make the animal testing more effective. |
| A．Lack of enough fund | B．Lack of human awareness |
| C．Lack of supportive statistics | D．Lack of effective alternatives |
【推荐3】Pleasingly, a new study supports one of my favourite insights about writing, or getting any creative work done-though I’m pretty sure that wasn’t intentional, since the researchers were actually studying traffic jams. Jonathan Boreyko, an American engineering professor, was crawling along in his car one day, observing how drivers naturally bunch up at red lights, leaving mere inches between vehicles. Their motivation isn’t a mystery: the closer you are to the car ahead, you’d assume, the better your chances of squeezing through before the light goes back to red, and the sooner you’ll reach your destination, even if you also increase the risk of collisions.
But you’d assume wrong. When Boreyko and a colleague recreated the traffic-light scenario (场景) on a special test track, they found that drivers who bunched up made no swifter progress. True, they stopped slightly closer to the light. But it also took them longer to resume (继续) moving safely, and these two factors canceled each other out. “There’s no point in getting closer to the car in front of you when traffic comes to a stop.” Boreyko concluded.
This is true of writing or similar work. People never rest in urgent pursuit of their goals. Yes, it all looks impressively productive. But as the psychologist Robert Boice argues, racing to get a task completed generally brings a cost that outweighs the benefit. You tire yourself out, so you can’t shine the next day. Or you neglect so many other duties that you’re forced to take an extra day to catch up. Or you start damaging work you already produced — which is why the novelist Cabriel Carcfa Marqucz said he gave up writing in the afternoon: he wrote more, but he had to redo it the next morning, so the overall effect was to slow him down. That’s also why Boice insists that when you’re writing on a schedule, it’s as important to be disciplined about stopping as starting, even if you’re on a roll.
Clearly, this is all a convenient way to feel superior to people who put in more hours. But that doesn’t mean it’s untrue. Indeed, it’s scary to ask what role impatience play in your life in general: how much of each day we spend leaning into the future, trying to get tasks “out of the way”, always focused on the destination, metaphorically (隐喻地) inching closer and closer to the bumper of the car ahead. None of it gets us anywhere faster. It’s also no way to live.
1. Which of the following best summarizes the finding of Boreyko’s study?| A．The sooner, the better. | B．More haste, no extra speed. |
| C．The early bird catches the worm. | D．Chances favour the prepared mind. |
| A．tight planning avoids chaos | B．overwork polishes our images |
| C．impatience almost never pays | D．afternoon time is less productive |
| A．advise people to stop racing | B．instruct people to write skillfully |
| C．persuade people to treasure time | D．warn people to obey traffic rules |
