Nightly Sleep Is Key to Student Success
For young adults, college is a time of transition. It may be the first time students have the freedom to determine how to spend their time, but this freedom comes with competing interests from academics, social events and even sleep.
A multi-institutional team of researchers conducted the first study to evaluate how the duration of nightly sleep early in the semester affects first year college students’ end-of-semester grade point average (GPA). Using sleep trackers, they found that students on average sleep 6.5 hours a night, but negative outcomes built up when students received less than six hours of sleep a night.
David Creswell, the William S. Dietrich II Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience at the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, led a team of researchers to evaluate the relationship between sleep and GPA.
“Animal studies have shown how critical sleep is for learning and memory,” said Creswell. “
“Once you start dropping below six hours, you are starting to add massive sleep debt that can harm a student’s health and study habits, damaging the whole system,” said Creswell. “
“A popular belief among college students is valuing studying more or partying more over nightly sleep,” said Creswell. “Our work here suggests that there are potentially real costs to reducing your nightly sleep on your ability to learn and achieve in college. There’s real value in budgeting for the importance of nightly sleep.”
| A．Here we show how this work translates to humans. |
| B．Many college students experience irregular and insufficient sleep. |
| C．The study evaluated more than 600 first-year students across five studies at three universities. |
| D．Most surprising to me was that no matter what we did to make the effect go away, it persisted. |
| E．The results are available in the Feb. 13 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. |
| F．Total nightly sleep is a potentially important and underappreciated behavior supporting academic achievement. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Chilly weather and common respiratory (呼吸器官的) infections often go hand in hand. Reasons for this include people gather inside more in winter and viruses survive better in low-humidity indoor air. But there has been less certainty about whether lower temperatures actually impair human immunity (免疫力) and, if so, how.
Now, a new study published December 6, 2022, in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology details a previously unknown way that the immune system attacks viruses inside the nose and finds it works better when it’s warm.
Mansoor Amiji, a pharmaceutical sciences professor at Northeastern University, found that our noses released “extracellular vesicles” (EVs) — a spray of tiny sacs (囊) that gathered and destroyed bacteria upon breathing in.
For the new research, the team set out to answer a question: is the strength of EVS’ response linked to temperature?
In order to tackle the question, they divided the nasal (鼻的) cell samples into two groups and cultivated them in a lab, subjecting one set of samples to 37C, and the other to 32°C.
Under regular body heat conditions, the EVs were successfully able to fight off viruses. But under the reduced temperatures, fewer EVs were produced, and those that were made packed less attack against the invaders tested: two rhinoviruses (鼻病毒的) and a non-COVID coronavirus, which are typically found in winter cold season.
“There’s never been a convincing reason why you have this very clear increase in viral infectivity in the cold months,” said co-author Benjamin Bleier, a surgeon at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Eye and Ear. “This is the first quantitative and biologically reasonable explanation that has been developed.” He added.
“These discoveries could pave the way for an eventual treatment against the common cold, or even the flu and COVID,” said Amiji, “That’s an area of great interest for us and we certainly continue to pursue that.”
1. What does the underlined word “impair” in Paragraph 1 mean?| A．Damage. | B．Improve. | C．Influence. | D．Preserve. |
| A．By raising a question. | B．By cultivating the nasal samples. |
| C．By setting the contrast experiment. | D．By adjusting the temperature in the lab. |
| A．The EVs are typically found in the cold season. |
| B．The EVs release sacs to destroy bacteria upon inhalation. |
| C．The EVs won’t resist the rhinoviruses under regular body heat conditions. |
| D．The EVs’ quantity and attack power are positively associated with temperature. |
| A．Skeptical. | B．Approved. | C．Conservative. | D．Indifferent. |
【推荐2】If exercise seems like a great idea but you can never keep up a routine, it’s worth thinking about your exercise “mindset” — defined by psychologists as attitudes that shape our behaviour and reality. Research evidence is mounting that identifying some of our most habitual beliefs and replacing them with more adaptive ones can revive our ability to keep ourselves healthy.
“Whether they’re true or not, mindsets have an effect,” says Dr. Alia Crum. “They change what we pay attention to, what we’re motivated to do, how we feel emotionally about what we’re doing and what we decide to prioritize (优先处理).” For instance, maybe you’ve tried to shame or scare yourself into going to the gym by reconsidering the health risks of not moving. Or perhaps you’ve aimed to get active by thinking of the long-term positive aspects of exercise: exercising regularly is 1.5 times more effective than taking medicine in easing depression, stress and anxiety.
In contrast, thinking about exercise in all-or-nothing terms — “I need at least 30 minutes or there’s no point” — is the enemy of consistency. You want to use the mindset that “any and all movement is worth it, and everything counts,” says Dr. Michelle Segar, a researcher at the University of Michigan. Even a quick walk in the middle of a busy day is good for your well-being. If that doesn’t agree with your perfectionist tendencies (倾向), consider whether those tendencies have worked for you. Though strict standards may help some people, for many others they backfire, creating a cycle of failure.
Besides bringing flexibility (灵活性) to how you view your movement, changing your “why” for getting active can also help keep up motivation. Rather than seeing workouts as a way to lose weight, it can help to focus on more immediately pleasant reasons to do it, like clearing your mind or feeling less stressed.
Regarding the process of exercise as something that’s attractive makes a difference. The key is to focus on the pleasure that exercise can bring, and then pick an activity that is actually rewarding.
1. What’s the writing purpose of paragraph 1?| A．To give a general description of mindset. |
| B．To explain people’s confusion over mindset. |
| C．To investigate the reasons for habitual behaviors. |
| D．To stress the importance of adapting exercise mindset. |
| A．Everything matters in promoting one’s health. |
| B．Mindsets affect one’s motivation and decision to act. |
| C．It’s a good idea to make an exercise plan more flexible. |
| D．It’s necessary to take some enjoyable and valuable exercise. |
| A．Strict standards require people to work out every day. |
| B．Strict standards aren’t suitable for those perfectionists. |
| C．Strict standards may lead to the opposite result for others. |
| D．Strict standards stop people revising their plans regularly. |
| A．A New Study of Exercise Routine | B．Focus on the Pleasure of Exercise |
| C．The Power of Your Exercise Mindset | D．Exercise Mindset and Failures Connected |
【推荐3】Nowadays a vegetarian lifestyle is becoming more and more popular. Leading health experts agree that maintaining a vegetarian diet is one of the best things we can do for ourselves and our families.
Scientists have also found that vegetarians have stronger immune systems than their meat eating friends.
| A．Living on plants also saves energy. |
| B．Growing all the crops needed to feed animals requires massive amounts of water and land. |
| C．This means that they are less likely to be affected by everyday illnesses like the flu. |
| D．Vegetarian diets are the only diets that work for long-term weight loss. |
| E．It’s never too late to turn over a new page. |
| F．Healthy vegetarian diets support a lifetime of good health. |
