Deep sleep doesn’t just rest your body. Scientists believe it’s also when the brain washes away toxins (毒素), with a new project looking at whether the brain’s self-clean can be boosted.
South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) neuroscientist Dr Tim Sargeant has teamed with Dr Edward Robins from SAHMRI’s Molecular Imaging and Therapy Research Unit to develop a brain scan that shows how well a brain is cleaning itself. Studies have shown that a clean brain would help with memory while fighting dementia (痴呆).
Scientists believe our brains clean themselves out each night when we enter deep sleep. Cerebrospinal fluid (脑脊液) is thought to wash through the brain, cleaning out toxins. Studies have shown a clear link between poor memory and toxins like the buildup of sticky plaques (粘性斑块) in the brains. Scientists believe brains that have a buildup of this plaque over time may not be cleaning themselves properly, putting people at risk of dementia.
Fortunately, the hope is that a clean brain would help with memory while fighting dementia. The brain scan will use special material to track how well the brain can keep itself clean and healthy through the process of removing and recycling its waste. “We’re aiming to catch the signs of the brain struggling to keep itself clean in individuals around the age of 50 or 60, well before the onset of Alzheimer’s disease (老年痴呆症) in most people,” Dr Sargeant said.
This new scan, an exciting imaging technology, will allow scientists to form a picture of a living brain and watch how it’s recycling wasting material in real time. “The scan takes out a lot of the guess work, by allowing scientists to see with their own eyes if they’ve hit the target or not,” Dr Robins said. “Without imaging, a researcher can get all the way up to the trial stage before realising they’re at a dead end.”
1. What is the aim of Dr Sargeant and Dr Robins’ developing the brain scan?| A．To help people enter deep sleep. | B．To reduce memory loss and dementia. |
| C．To research how to remove sticky plaques. | D．To study what the brain uses to clean itself. |
| A．Not enough blood in the brain. | B．Too frequent cleaning of the brain. |
| C．The increase of cerebrospinal fluid. | D．The gradual increase of sticky plaques. |
| A．Beginning. | B．Improvement. | C．Worsening. | D．Disappearance. |
| A．It brings more work. | B．It is just imaginary. |
| C．It is quite effective. | D．It is far from exact. |
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【推荐1】Ayla Bashir, a 16-month-old girl from Ottowa, Canada, is healthy after doctors used a new method to treat her before she was born. Her mother, Sobia Qureshi, recently told The Associated Press her daughter is now an active, happy girl who is growing normally. And her parents previously lost two daughters, Zara, 2.5, and Sara, 8 months, to the condition.
Ayla has a rare genetic disease called Pompe, which causes the body to fail to make some or all of an important enzyme (酶). But a new case study describes the new treatment method that seems to be working for Ayla.
Dr. Karen Fung-Kee-Fung, a medicine specialist who works with fetuses (胎儿), gave Ayla the treatment which was developed by Dr. Tippi MacKenzie, co-director of the Center for Maternal-Fetal Precision Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
MacKenzie shared her research with Fung-Kee-Fung. “We were all motivated to make this happen for this family,” MacKenzie said.
Ayla received six treatments, starting at about 24 weeks of fetal (胎儿的) development. And Dr. Pranesh Chakraborty has cared for Ayla’s family for years. He told the AP that what made the treatment highly effective was completing it early, while the fetus was still developing.
Pompe affects fewer than 1 in 100，000 newborns. It is caused by changes in a gene that makes an enzyme that breaks down glycogen, or stored sugar, in cells. When that enzyme is reduced or removed, glycogen (肝糖元) builds up dangerously throughout the body.
Babies with Pompe disease have trouble feeding and experience muscle weakness. They often have very enlarged hearts. When left untreated, most babies die from heart or breathing problems during the first year of life. In addition to the girls who died, Ayla’s parents have a 13-year-old son and a five-year-old daughter. Neither of those children were affected by the disorder.
For now, doctors are waiting to see whether the treatment can become a generally accepted form of treatment. Dr. Christina Lam, a biochemical genetics specialist at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital in Seattle, said it will take some time to clearly demonstrate whether the results of the new treatment are better for patients.
Ayla receives drugs for her immune system and weekly enzyme treatments that take five to six hours. Unless a new method is found, Ayla is likely to continue the treatments throughout her life.
1. According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?| A．Ayla is now an active, happy girl who is growing normally and there is no need to continue the treatment. |
| B．If Ayla had not been treated before she was born, she might not survive now. |
| C．Babies with Pompe disease often die from heart and breathing problems and have enlarged stomach. |
| D．Besides Ayla, Sobia Qureshi has a 13-year-old son and a five-year-old daughter with the same disease, Pompe. |
| A．Because it plays an important part in producing blood. |
| B．Because it can help the glycogen build up throughout the body. |
| C．Because it can store the sugar in cells, which is beneficial to people’s immune system. |
| D．Because it can make the glycogen separate into parts. |
| A．Dr. Karen Fung-Kee-Fung, who developed the new method, gave Ayla the treatment. |
| B．In Dr. Christina Lam’s opinion, the treatment has proved to be effective in curing the disease. |
| C．When the fetus is completely developed, the treatment can be highly effective. |
| D．Ayla has to receive enzyme treatments every week and keep taking drugs in order to keep health. |
| A．For first time, doctors treat deadly disease before birth |
| B．A brave girl fights against a rare genetic disease |
| C．The unlucky couple gain their confidence in life |
| D．Doctors discovered a new important enzyme |
【推荐2】Across the United Kingdom, as the COVID-19 crisis has bitten deeper, its citizens have started a new practice: Emerging from self-isolation every Thursday night at 8 p.m. to clap, cheer, and bang pots and pans to show support for the country’s front-line doctors and nurses.
But as the death toll today hit a single-day U.K. record of 980-and with the peak death rate still estimated to be two weeks away-the crisis caused by the scale of the pandemic has been worsened here by a new degree of political uncertainty. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was admitted to the hospital on Sunday and has spent his days and nights in intensive care fighting the virus, surrounded by the doctors and nurses of the National Health Service.
The U.K. is not alone in showing new found public affection for key workers, nor in facing an unprecedented public health emergency that has, in Europe, especially affected Italy, Spain, and France. A recent U.K. government appeal for 250,000 volunteers to help the NHS (National Health Service) yielded an army of 750,000 would-be helpers.
But the pandemic finds the U.K. at a politically uncertain moment, as a nation finally emerging from three and a half years of political issue over its chaotic departure from the European Union. A December election that gave a decisive victory to Mr. Johnson and the ruling Conservative Party added clarity to a Brexit mandate and was seen by many as a potential first step in healing deep divisions in Britain’s political and social structure.
Acknowledging the impact of the coronavirus on daily lives, Queen Elizabeth II, in a rare address on Sunday, praised the “national spirit” and thanked NHS and care workers, whose “every hour” of hard work “brings us closer to a return to a more normal time.” Calling on citizens to “remain united and resolute” to overcome the pandemic, she sought to provide comfort. “While we may have still more to endure, better days will return We will meet again,” she said.
1. What contributed to worsening the current crisis in the U.K?| A．The pandemic of COVID-19. | B．Political instability. |
| C．The vote for Brexit. | D．The December election. |
| A．clapping, cheering, and banging pots and pans every Thursday night |
| B．advocating volunteers to help the NHS |
| C．organizing 750,000 helpers to join the army |
| D．praising the “national spirit” in Queen’s speech |
| A．The death toll set a new single-day record and the peak death had arrived |
| B．Prime Minister Boris Johnson was receiving good medical treatment |
| C．the COVID-19 has been found in European history |
| D．Conservative Party has healed the deep political and social divisions |
| A．A noticeboard. | B．A private e-mail. |
| C．A research paper. | D．A newspaper. |
【推荐3】A recent research suggests that artificial intelligence (AI) could hold the potential for predicting sudden cardiac (心脏的) death and assessing an individual’s risk to potentially prevent future deaths. This development may mark a novel step towards prevention and global health strategies.
Professor Xavier Jouven, lead author of the study, said, “Sudden cardiac death, a public health burden, represents 10% to 20% of overall deaths. Predicting it is difficult, and the usual approaches fail to identify high-risk people, particularly at an individual level. We proposed a new approach.”
The scientific team employed AI to analyze medical data obtained from registries and databases in Paris, France and Seattle. They examined records of 25,000 individuals who had experienced sudden cardiac arrest and compared them with data from 70,000 people from the general population. The matching process involved age, sex and residential area. Using AI, the scientists created about 25,000 personalized health models to evaluate the data and identify individuals at high risk of sudden cardiac death. Additionally, they established a risk file for each participant in the study.
The AI analysis was able to identify people who had more than 90% of risk dying suddenly, and it can predict about more than one-fourth of all cases of sudden cardiac death. “We have been working for almost 30 years in the field of sudden cardiac death prediction. However, we did not expect to reach such a high level of accuracy,” said Jouven, who is the founder of the Paris Sudden Death Expertise Center.
Jouven added. “While doctors have efficient treatments, the use of AI is necessary to detect in a given subject a succession of medical information registered over the years. We hope that with a personalized list of risk factors, patients will be able to work with their clinicians to reduce those risk factors and ultimately decrease the potential for sudden cardiac death.”
1. What can be known about sudden cardiac death?| A．It is hard to predict and prevent. |
| B．Researchers still can do nothing about it. |
| C．It accounts for the highest percentage of all deaths. |
| D．Old approaches can effectively identify its high-risk people. |
| A．Its result. | B．Its process. | C．Its purpose. | D．Its participants. |
| A．Worried. | B．Amazed. | C．Annoyed. | D．Disappointed. |
| A．The Biggest AI Development in 2024 | B．Using AI to Stop Future Cardiac Attack |
| C．Improved Prediction of Death in Patients | D．Predicting Sudden Cardiac Death Using Al |
【推荐1】How Dopamine Influences Behaviour
In lab experiments, dopamine prompts a rat to press a lever for food again and again. This is no different in humans. It’s the reason why we enjoy eating more than one helping of cake. This press-the-lever action applies to addiction as well. People with low levels of dopamine may be more prone to addiction; a person seeking pleasure via drugs or alcohol or food needs higher and higher levels of dopamine.
Dopamine causes you to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases your general level of arousal and your goal-directed behaviour. Dopamine makes you curious about ideas and fuels your searching for information. Dopamine creates reward-seeking loops in the sense that people will repeat pleasurable behaviour, from checking Instagram to taking drugs.
A person with high levels of dopamine, whether due to temperament or to a transient—perhaps chemically induced state—can be described as a sensation seeker. The upside of sensation seeking is that people see potential stressors as challenges to be overcome rather than threats that might crush them. This mindset is a buffer (缓冲)against the stress of life. It increases their hardiness and resilience in the long term.
The release of dopamine creates a reward circuit in the brain. This circuit registers an intense experience(such as getting high)as “important“ and creates lasting memories of it as pleasurable. Dopamine changes the brain on a cellular level, commanding the brain to do it again.
It is no exaggeration to say that dopamine makes us human. Beginning in infant development, dopamine levels are critical, and mental disabilities can arise if dopamine is not present in sufficient quantities. Dopamine is implicated in genetic conditions like congenital hypothyroidism. Dopamine deficiency is also implicated in other conditions such as Alzheimer’s, depressive disorders, binge—eating, addiction, and gambling.
Drugs currently used to treat ADHD(attention deficit hyperactivity disorder)do indeed increase the effectiveness of dopamine. This helps patients with ADHD focus and pay better attention to one thing at a time. How exactly more dopamine translates into better concentration and focus is not yet understood.
There are ways to up one’s dopamine levels naturally, and basic self-care is the place to start. A night of fitful sleep, for one, can reduce dopamine drastically.
1. The word ”more prone“ in Paragraph 1 most probably means ”__________“.| A．resistant | B．less likely |
| C．more likely | D．reluctant |
| A．He or she will fight against the stress of life more easily. |
| B．He or she can foresee the possible stress of life. |
| C．He or she is more likely to cultivate a positive outlook. |
| D．He or she will be a physically strong person in the long run. |
| A．It will not only cause mental health but also affect physical health. |
| B．It may result in chronic disease. |
| C．It may account for the depressive disorders. |
| D．It will cause difficulties in communication with each other. |
| A．The downside of dopamine. | B．How to increase dopamine. |
| C．Dopamine in daily life. | D．Dopamine in mammals. |
注意：每个空格只填一个单词。
WARNING: Holding a cellphone against your ear or storing it in your pocket may be dangerous to your health.
This paraphrases (解释) a warning that cellphone manufacturers include in the small print that is often taken for granted when a new phone is purchased. Apple, for example, doesn’t want iPhones to come closer to you than 1.5 centimeters. Research In Motion, BlackBerry’s manufacturer, recommends 2.5 centimeters.
If health issues arise from cellphone use, the results are serious. Voice calls—Americans chat on cellphones 2.26 trillion minutes annually—bring in $109 billion for the wireless carriers.
Devra Davis, who has worked for the University of Pittsburgh, has published a book about cellphone radiation, “Disconnect.” The book surveys scientific research and concludes the question is not settled.
Brain cancer is a concern that Ms. Davis examines. Over all, there has not been an increase in its incidence since cellphones arrived. But the average covers an increase in brain cancer in the 20-to-29 age group and a drop for the older population.
“Most cancers have multiple causes,” she says, but she points to laboratory research that suggests low-energy radiation could damage cells that could possibly lead to cancer.
Children are more vulnerable (易受伤害的) to radiation than adults, Ms. Davis and other scientists point out. Radiation that enters the brain of an adult only five centimeters will reach much deeper into the brains of children because their skulls are thinner and their brains contain more absorptive fluid. No studies have yet been completed on cellphone radiation and children, she says.
Henry Lai, a research professor in the bioengineering department at the University of Washington, began laboratory radiation studies in 1980 and found that rats exposed to radiofrequency radiation had damaged DNA in their brains.
Ms. Davis recommends using wired headsets or the phone’s speaker. Children should send text message rather than call, she said, and pregnant women should keep phones away from the abdomen (腹部).
| Topic | Keep a certain | ||
| Several | A (n) Low-energy radiation could Children are more Rats In brain cancer in the 20-to-29 age group. Low-energy radiation could cell possibly leading to cancer. Children are more to radiation. | ||
| Make their warning markings larger. | |||
| Users | Using wired headsets or the phone’s speaker. | ||
| Sending text messages instead of calling. | |||
| Pregnant women | Keeping phones away from the abdomen. | ||
【推荐3】Sharks may be able to smell blood from miles away, but they probably don't know how red it is. It is likely that they only see the world in black and white according to a study that is the first to look into sharks’ visual systems.
A team at the University of Western Australia studied the visual systems of many different species of sharks and what they have found is diversity in eye design that mirrors the ecological and behavioral diversity of the shark species. The team looked at the retinal cells of 17 species of sharks caught from Queensland and Western Australia and found out that the cells are responsible for sharks’ color blindness.
According to the study, these animals are color-blind due to the light receptors they have got in their eyes. There are two main types of light-sensitive ceils to allow animals to see: rod cells help measure brightness because they are highly sensitive to light and allow night vision but cannot tell colors apart, while various types of cone cells help distinguish colors. They looked at the structure of sharks' rod and cone cells in the retina. Human eyes come with red, green and blue cone variations, while sharks appear to have just one kind of cone cell.
The study suggests that contrast against the background, rather than color itself, might be more important for object detection by sharks. Costumes that camouflage swimmers’ bodies in sea water are less likely to draw a shark’s attention than ones with bright, solid colors that emphasize their outline. “It’s the high contrast against the water rather than the color itself which is probably attractive to sharks,” said Professor Nathan Hart who led the study.
1. What does Paragraph 2 mainly talk about?| A．Stressing the importance of the study. |
| B．Showing the features of sharks’ eye design. |
| C．Giving the process and the result of the study. |
| D．Telling the functions of sharks’ visual systems. |
| A．Their less sensitive rod cells. | B．Their lack of various cone cells. |
| C．Their inability to tell apart colors. | D．Their strong sensitivity to brightness. |
| A．The color plays a key part in sharks' detecting objects. |
| B．You should make your outline stand out in the sea for your safety. |
| C．You should be dressed in bright color to avoid sharks’ attention in the sea. |
| D．Sharks are more interested in sharp contrast against the water rather than your body. |
| A．To challenge a traditional belief. |
| B．To inform us a scientific discovery. |
| C．To amuse us with interesting information. |
| D．To raise our awareness of protecting wild animals. |
【推荐1】How did life come about on Earth? Did it appear in a flash of light? Well, not exactly. A study published in the journal Nature Communications in March shows that lightning may have played a significant role in the creation of life on Earth.
When lightning hits sand, soil or stone, it melts the materials into a glassy material called fulgurite (闪电熔岩). When a group of researchers examined a particular fulgurite, they found a thick, tree-root-like structure extending down about a foot and a half (about 0.46 meters). “(It was) just entirely made of glass and (had), like, burned soil on the outside of it,” said Benjamin Hess, study author and graduate student at Yale University, US.
But what Hess and his colleagues at the University of Leeds, UK, found inside the fulgurite was even more impressive. According to Science News, “By firing X-rays and electrons (电子) at the fulgurite, and observing how those beams (光线) interacted with the material, the researchers were able to detect its composition.”
They discovered that the fulgurite contained schreibersite (磷铁石), a phosphorus (磷) mineral that can be dissolved in water. Phosphorus is essential for the formation of DNA and cell membranes (薄膜), as well as the formation of teeth and bones in humans, according to the website Phys.org.
It has long been thought that meteorites (陨石) were responsible for delivering this element to Earth. However, life began between 3.5 to 4.5 billion years ago when fewer meteorites were impacting Earth, reported CNN.
According to MSN, Hess and his colleagues estimated that early Earth saw one to five billion lightning flashes every year. Of those, anywhere from 100 million to 1 billion would have struck the ground annually, accounting for between 110 to 11,000 kg of phosphorus per year. While this is a large range, “even the low end is enough to potentially fuel the first life forms, and a quantity that may have eventually exceeded meteor strikes”, MSN reported.
1. What does the underlined word “significant” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．important | B．impressive |
| C．attractive | D．interesting |
| A．It looks like a tree root. |
| B．Fulgurite can be dissolved in water. |
| C．It is essential for the formation of DNA. |
| D．Schreibersite and phosphorus mineral can be found in it. |
| A．To report. | B．To explain. |
| C．To discuss. | D．To compare. |
| A．Entertainment. | B．Health. |
| C．Science. | D．Education. |
【推荐2】We tend to believe that older people are more positive and younger people are more sensitive to social cues (暗示).
Recently scientists explored this idea by testing 10,000 men and women. They wanted to see if age affected a person's ability to identify trivial facial emotions (情绪), such as fear and anger.
The researchers from McLean Hospital in the US used a Web-based platform to collect happiness data. It showed the subjects two headshots (头部特写) of random people. They were then asked to identify which subject was angrier, happier, or more fearful.
The research found that younger people were able to better identify angry and fearful facial cues than older people.
“From the previous studies, we know that the everyday experiences of a teenager are different from an older person, but we wanted to understand how these experiences might be linked with differences in basic emotion understanding.” wrote Laura Germine, the study's senior author.
But what is it that makes young people more sensitive?
“This is the exact age when young people are most sensitive to forms of negative social cues, such as bullying, (欺凌)” Lauren Rutter, the study’s lead author, told Science Daily. “The normal development of anger sensitivity can contribute to some of the challenges that arise during this period of development.”
On the contrary, across the whole 10,000-person survey, researchers found no reduction in the perception (感知) of happiness among older people.
“What's obvious is that we see decrease in many visual perceptual abilities as we get older, but here we did not see such decrease in the perception of happiness,” Germine told Neuro Science News.
She added that these findings fit well with other research, showing that older adults tend to have more positive emotions and a positive outlook.
Following the paper’s publishment, Rutter told Neuro Science News that gathering their primary research online allowed the team to look into a “much larger and more varied sample set (样本集)” than previous studies.
1. What conclusion does this research draw?| A．Young people often get bullied. |
| B．Young people are more sensitive, while old people are more positive. |
| C．The younger we are, the happier we will be. |
| D．The older, the less positive; the younger, the more positive. |
| A．Because of their education backgrounds. |
| B．Because of their friend circles. |
| C．Because of their bad experiences. |
| D．Because of their social abilities. |
| A．By offering examples. | B．By listing arguments. |
| C．By analyzing facts. | D．By listing findings. |
| A．An announcement. | B．A scientific journal. |
| C．A tour brochure. | D．A government report. |
【推荐3】Researchers from academia are more likely to experience anxiety and depression than average persons, as we report in a Feature investigating the mental-health crisis in science. It’s clear that a major factor common in academia is a harmful working environment. Short-term contracts, low salaries, and pressure to publish are also contributors — but so are bullying and harassment. Internal structures need to change. And modern systems of employee protection when things go wrong — such as those that encourage whistle-blowing — need to be implemented.
At the root of the problem is the mismatch between the idea of a university as a refuge (收容所) for lone geniuses and the collaborative nature of contemporary science. Also the research system still tends to put power in the hands of just one or a few persons, not shared more widely among a research team. It doesn’t have to be this way. When power and responsibility are shared, people work more harmoniously, and step up when required. But if power is given to one or only a few people, it can be misused to annoy and bully others. All too often, this is what happens.
Although universities do have whistle-blowing procedures (which protect people from being punished if disclosing wrongdoing), they often discourage anonymization (匿名) for those drawing attention to inappropriate behaviours. Some argue that it makes complaints more difficult to investigate, but anonymous whistle-blowing provides a fairer way to obtain justice in an environment in which the person causing harm is often also the person ultimately responsible for an individual’s career prospects.
Universities need to take a good look at this matter and study how international organizational structures could be reformed. A good first step would be to look to industry, because we know that researchers working in industry report higher job satisfaction than do their academic peers. At the same time, academic governing bodies should revisit mechanisms for whistle-blowing.
Universities have extensive connections to industry, through industry-academia collaborations, through knowledge-exchange offices and through the direct involvement of business people. These relationships could all be used to study ways to bring about positive change in academia.
The need to achieve positive change cannot be overstated. Doing nothing is not an option. If the next generation of researchers is as dissatisfied as our Feature suggests, then no less than the future of research and scholarship is at risk.
1. Which is mainly responsible for researchers’ heightened anxiety?| A．Lack of cooperation. | B．The future of research. |
| C．Discouraging whistle-blowing. | D．Bad atmosphere in workplace. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Indifferent. | C．Critical. | D．Ambiguous. |
| A．Pay higher salaries. | B．Restructure institutions. |
| C．Increase contract lengths. | D．Encourage competition. |
| A．The popularity of academic bullying. | B．The salary structure of academic researchers. |
| C．The lack of collaboration in scientific research. | D．The problem academic researchers are facing. |
