Nightmare disorder is characterized by frequent nightmares that cause unhappiness and greatly impact our life. But a new approach is added to existing therapy (疗法) by introducing certain sounds which can help a person to turn their nightmare into a sweet dream.
The existing therapy, called Imagery Rehearsal Therapy (IRT), is already used as a way to reduce the frequency and intensity of nightmares. “You write down the bad dream in a very detailed way and then create new endings that are nonfrightening for nightmares,” said Dr. Kilkenny, the director of the Institute of Sleep Medicine at Staten Island University Hospital.
In this newly published study, the 36 participants were divided into 2 equal-sized groups. Both groups practiced IRT, but the second group additionally used Targeted Memory Reactivation (TMR). TMR works by associating the stimulation (刺激) of a specific sound with a specific thought while you’re awake. The daily practice saw them completing IRT with added TMR. The 36 participants were then recorded for 2 weeks as they slept.
Fortunately for the dreamers, both groups saw an improvement in their sleep and a drop in nightmare frequency. However, the group who had received the combination of IRT and TMR saw a drop in nightmare frequency that lasted for three months beyond the study — and even began to experience more joyful dreams instead of nightmares. “The study shows again that IRT alone works to improve nightmare disorder, but the new change is that the addition of TMR to IRT not only improves nightmare disorder but also increases the amount of positive dream experiences,” said Kilkenny.
While the results of this study are encouraging, it might be difficult to carry out them on your own. “If you’re experiencing frequent or serious nightmares, it may be helpful to first address your sleeping habits and make sure your are getting enough sleep with regular sleep and wake times,” said Dr. Dimitriu, the founder of Menlo Sleep Medicine in California.
1. What are patients required to do in IRT?| A．Listen to calming music during sleep. |
| B．Record their frequency of nightmares. |
| C．Recreate a pleasant ending for the nightmare. |
| D．Tell the doctor about details of their nightmares. |
| A．By taking sleeping medicine. |
| B．By practicing IRT more times. |
| C．By introducing sound stimulation. |
| D．By recording sounds in nightmares. |
| A．Participants tend to sleep longer than before. |
| B．TMR could enhance the effectiveness of IRT. |
| C．The sound treatment can help improve sleeplessness. |
| D．The nightmares can be avoided by both TMR and IRT. |
| A．Taking regular exercises. | B．Doing a medical checkup. |
| C．Seeking accurate examination. | D．Adjusting the sleeping habits. |
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【推荐1】In Vietnamese, Ngan's name means “star,” but she wasn't able to smile brightly because she was born with a cleft (兔唇) condition.
Ngan's family lives in a small, isolated village in southern Vietnam. Without help, her family would never have been able to afford the reconstructive surgery that would change Ngan's lite and give her a brighter future. But when Ngan's parents heard that Operation Smile was conducting a surgical mission in Danang, they did everything in their power to take Ngan there for medical mission. Ngan and her family travelled more than 200 miles for the chance to give her a new smile. Ngan received life-changing surgery on her cleft lip and palate and now, 10 years later, she is a happy, healthy, lively girl-with a smile that shows it.
Before she had surgery, Ngan's facial condition prevented her social engagement and even her involvement in school. Now, with the confidence she gained from her new smile, Ngan can reach her full potential.
Ngan's parents say they had given up everything but hope before Operation Smile gave their daughter the chance to see her dreams become a reality. “Many families in our province will abandon their child if a baby is born with a cleft,” Ngan's father said.
He never wants this to happen, knowing how incredible the transformation is with a free surgery through Operation Smile. Ngan's parents now actively refer to other families of children born with cleft conditions to Operation Smile. They are determined to ensure that every child has the opportunity for a brighter future, regardless of their appearances.
Operation Smile has provided hundreds of thousands of safe surgeries for those born with cleft conditions worldwide. If you would like additional information please visit www. operationsmile. org. uk/Star, call 020 3475 5126 or write to Operation Smile UK, Genos House, Juniper Drive, London SW18 1FY.
1. What do we know about Ngan?| A．She got seriously ill after she was born. |
| B．She was born physically-challenged. |
| C．She was abandoned by her parents. |
| D．She was always smiling brightly. |
| A．An organization aiming to help hopeless villagers. |
| B．An organization aiming to help children with cleft. |
| C．An organization aiming to make children educated. |
| D．An organization aiming to do surgeries for the poor. |
| A．Responsible. | B．Conventional. |
| C．Experienced. | D．Passive. |
| A．To explain what is cleft. | B．To promote Operation Smile. |
| C．To introduce a girl with cleft. | D．To call for donations for girls with cleft. |
【推荐2】As with other organs like the heart, lungs, or liver, human life depends on healthy kidneys (肾脏). One way to help a patient with kidney trouble is to replace their kidneys with healthy kidneys, which is called a “transplant”. For years, scientists have tried to figure out how to transplant organs from other animals into humans. This is hard because the human body almost always rejects something that isn’t its own.
Scientists have tried transplanting organs from chimpanzees (黑猩猩) or baboons (狒狒), but this didn’t work very well. More recently, scientists have focused on transplants from pigs. In many ways, pigs’ bodies are similar to humans. It’s fairly easy to raise pigs, and they grow quickly. It’s now common for doctors to transplant pig heart valves (瓣膜) to repair damaged human hearts. Heart valves open and close to help the heart pump blood.
But human bodies normally reject other pig organs because they contain a special chemical called “alpha-gal”. This time, to prevent the body from rejecting the pig kidney, scientists changed the pig’s DNA slightly so that it wouldn’t produce alpha-gal.
Last month, a medical team at New York University Langone Health, led by Dr. Robert Montgomery, attached this special pig kidney to a brain-dead human patient, who had wished to donate her organs, for the first time ever. The kidney functioned normally for the hours it was attached. “There didn’t seem to be any kind of sign between the pig kidney and the human that would make it not work,” said Montgomery. “It was beyond our expectation. It didn’t have the immediate rejection that we had worried about.”
Though the kidney wasn’t placed inside the patient’s body, it was connected to the patient for over two days. During that time, the kidney worked as kidneys are supposed to work. Most importantly, there were no signs that the kidney was being rejected. However, there are still many questions to be answered. It’s not known what would happen once this kind of kidney is actually transplanted into a human. Would it be rejected after a while?
1. What does paragraph 2 focus on?| A．Pig heart valves’ main functions. | B．The use of pigs in medical research. |
| C．Pigs’ advantages over other animals. | D．Similarities between pigs and humans. |
| A．Surprised. | B．Natural. | C．Nervous. | D．Disappointed. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Objective. | C．Favorable. | D．Tolerant. |
| A．Rejection Reactions to Pig Kidneys Are Studied |
| B．It Is Hard to Perform Animal-to-Human Transplants |
| C．Scientists Work on Performing Kidney Transplants |
| D．Human Test of Pig Kidney Transplant Is Successful |
【推荐3】Patients with light or moderate depression can be successfully treated by swimming with dolphins, researchers said on Saturday.
The study was carried out in Honduras, including patients who were thought by the doctors with light of moderate depression coming from the United States and Honduras.
For two weeks, half of the group swam and snorkeled (潜泳) with dolphins for an hour a day. At the same time the other half group carried out the same type of water activities, but with the absence of dolphins. Researchers want to find out the influence of water and the natural setting.
All the study volunteers didn’t continue to take any drugs or psychotherapy ( 心理治疗) at least for weeks before the start of the study and did not take any drugs during the study, said the researchers from the division of clinical Psychiatry at t e the University of Leicester Medical School.
By the end of the study, those people who swam with the dolphins had a greater average reduction in their depressive symptoms than those who did not.
The researchers noted that the study supports the theory of biophilia, which thinks that human health and well-being depends partly on the human connection with the natural world. The findings appeared in the issue of the British Medical Journal.
Coming from the Greek, biophilia means “love of life”, and it has been developed by biologists to reflect the humans’ natural tendency to connect with nature and animals, leading to interactions and positive emotions that result in psychological treatment.
1. Why didn’t the volunteers take drugs before and during the study?| A．Because the drugs had no effect at all. |
| B．Because they didn’t want to take drugs. |
| C．Because the result of study might be affected. |
| D．Because they wanted to make the study easier. |
| A．We should often swim with dolphins. |
| B．Nature and animals are important to human beings. |
| C．Dolphins need to be protected by human beings. |
| D．There are no effective drugs to treat depression. |
| A．The English word means “love of life”. |
| B．The biologists understand it in a new way. |
| C．Actually we don’t use the word any longer. |
| D．It’s a new way to swim with dolphins. |
| A．Swimming with dolphins can treat depression. |
| B．Patients with depression like swimming with dolphins. |
| C．What’s the relationship between dolphins and people. |
| D．Dolphins are smarter than other animals. |
【推荐1】If you’ve ever seen a river rushing down a mountain or played in breaking waves at the beach, you’ll know that moving water contains a lot of energy. A river can push you and your boat downstream, sometimes quickly, and waves crashing into you at the beach can knock you back, or even knock you over.
This energy of moving water originates from the water cycle, where water evaporates or is released from plants, rises to higher sea level, cools, and changes into liquid, forming clouds. Rain or snow that falls from these clouds flows downhill due to gravity, forming rivers or melting into existing water paths.
Hydropower (水电) uses this energy from flowing water. It uses turbines, which are turned by moving water. These turbines turn around a rotor inside a device called generator, turning the motion into electricity with the help of magnets.
There are two primary types of hydropower facilities (设施). The first is called the run-of-the-river facilities, which channel river water through turbines. The electricity production follows the timing of the river flow. When a river is running full with lots of spring rain or meltwater, the turbine can produce more electricity. Later in the summer, when the river flow decreases, so does the turbine’s output. These types of power stations are typically small and easy to build, but there is limited ability to control the amount of electricity they produce.
The second type is the dam (大坝)-based facilities. These use a solid dam to hold back the flow of a river and create an artificial lake behind it. The dam operator releases water from his lake, which flows through pipes inside the dam. Turbines within the dam generate electricity as the water passes through them, and then the water flows out the other side. These facilities are usually large and can affect river habitats, but they can also produce a lot of electricity in a controllable manner.
Hydropower depends on the availability of water in flowing rivers. As climate change affects the water cycle, some regions may have less rainfall and therefore less hydropower generation. Since hydropower is a form of renewable electricity, it can play a role in limiting climate change. Hydropower facilities can also help avoid any imbalance in electricity production from wind farms and solar power plants.
1. The underlined word “evaporate” in paragraph 2 can be replaced by “________”| A．form a circle | B．turn into a gas |
| C．fall to the ground | D．change into liquid |
| A．turbine | B．magnet | C．pipe | D．rotor |
| A．Only dam-based facilities use water to generate electricity and they are easy to construct. |
| B．Electricity production by the run-of-the-river facilities doesn’t vary with river flow. |
| C．Dam-based facilities provide a more considerable and adjustable electricity supply. |
| D．Run-of-the-river facilities have a larger impact on river habitats than dam-based facilities. |
| A．Optimistic | B．Critical | C．Doubtful | D．Indifferent |
【推荐2】As humanity sets their sights on deep space exploration, the moon becomes a stepping stone, with countries hoping to build lunar bases to support such missions. To solve the “lunch” problem, scientists have been exploring the possibility of growing plants on the moon. A new study by Chinese scientists has found that bacteria in soil from Earth could offer a solution.
Researchers from China Agricultural University tested five species of bacteria on a material that simulated (模拟) lunar soil. Within a period of 10 to 21 days, three of the bacteria species had doubled their amount of phosphorus (磷) content, a key element for plant growth.
They then grew model plants in the lunar soil containing these three bacteria species. They observed that the plants had longer stems and roots after six days of growth compared with those grown without the bacteria. The plants also had heavier and wider leaves after 24 days of growth. Besides, levels of chlorophyll (叶绿素) — responsible for harvesting energy from light — in the model plants were about double that of those grown without bacteria.
“The study results have important implications for future long-term stays on the moon,” the study’s lead researcher, Sun Zhencai, told Xinhua. Earth bacteria may help astronauts make better use of lunar resources, such as creating lunar greenhouses. In their follow-up research, they hope to experiment with real lunar soil samples and grow crops like rice, com and potatoes.
Since the duration of space missions is increasing, carrying all food supplies to space becomes unsustainable. Hence, “space farmers” becomes critical.
During the Shenzhou XI mission, astronauts managed to grow lettuce, from sowing to harvest. In the later missions, the “space farmers” have successfully grown wheat, rice and thale cress (拟南芥), according to CCTV News.
The most recent visitors to China’s space station, the Shenzhou XVII astronauts, are now growing lettuce, scallion and cherry tomato. These “space farmers” not only provide astronauts with food but also more oxygen and water.
1. What do scientists hope the bacteria in soil from Earth can do?| A．Change lunar soil. into Earth soil. | B．Remove pollutants in lunar soil. |
| C．Help cultivate crops on the moon. | D．Get nutrients from the lunar soil. |
| A．plant species | B．bacteria species |
| C．the growth rate of the plants | D．the presence of the bacteria |
| A．Future missions. | B．Recent achievements. |
| C．Planting methods. | D．Production processes. |
| A．Bacteria from: Earth May Help Grow Crops on the Moon |
| B．Bacteria Play a Key Role in Growing Crops Nowadays |
| C．China Has Made Many Achievements Regarding Crop Harvest |
| D．The Origin and Development of Space Exploration Worldwide |
【推荐3】How long can human beings live?
Even though we can’t live forever, we are living a longer life than ever before. In 1900, the average American life-span was only 47 years, but today it is 75 years!
People are living longer because more people survive childhood.
| A．On the whole, our population is getting older. |
| B．Most scientists studying old age think the human body is designed to live no longer than 120 years. |
| C．A recent research shows that cancer cells can multiply themselves like crazy at all times |
| D．Before modern medicine changed the laws of nature, many children died of common childhood diseases. |
| E．When does old age begin then? |
| F．As the society grows old, we need the contributions of our older citizens. |
| G．Yet, the cells in the human body simply cannot continue to reproduce endlessly. |
【推荐1】Efforts of growing organic vegetables that brings much less damage to the farmland paid off as Yunnan Province in southwest China has been trying to deliver its promise to better protect its natural resources.
In the trail field under the management of Yunling Organic Agriculture Development Co., Ltd , the organic matter in soil has been improved while content of some heavy metals has been reduced ever since the organic planting project started in 2017. The green fertilizer they use has left close to little pollution in the soil, which is of critical significance as the field that covers 240 hectares of land is located right in the middle of Kunming Songhuaba Reservoir Nature Reserve.
Now, more than 50 tons of vegetables of more than 20 varieties from the field are sent to places across China every day. Although the price is three to five times higher than that of ordinary vegetables, it is popular in the middle and high-end retail markets in east, central and south China. In Tonghai County, one of the main producing areas, the organic vegetables have begun to enter Southeast Asian market.
“A revolutionary change should be made to the traditional growing mode or cultivation technology. If the zero emission of chemical remains is realized, our problems of environmental pollution will be solved,” said He Jiangming, researcher at the Institute of Horticulture, Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
1. What does the underlined word “deliver” in paragraph 1 probably mean?| A．Send. | B．Address. | C．Keep. | D．Save. |
| A．Yunnan province intends to grow organic vegetables to make more money. |
| B．The soil in the trail field is metal-free. |
| C．The organic vegetables are not popular because of their high prices. |
| D．Organic farming may help solve the problems of environmental pollution. |
| A．Doubtful | B．Critical | C．Optimistic | D．Neutral |
| A．All efforts paid off | B．Clean organic farming brings green future |
| C．How to reduce heavy metals in soil? | D．Traditional or organic ? |
【推荐2】After finishing his dinner, Lin Xu opened a WeChat mini-program called "Clear Plate" on his phone and took picture of the empty plates. He was then awarded 157 credit points after the image was uploaded and recognized by artificial intelligence.
“Users of the app can use their credit to buy gifts, such as books and cellphones to purchase charity meals donated to children in poor rural areas,” Lin said.
A nationwide "Clear Your Plate" campaign is gaining steam online. Efforts to stop food waste and promote thrift are also being made by restaurants that have been urged to create an environment in which consumers are reminded not to waste food. They are also encouraged to offer different portion sizes so that customers can have more choices.
The “Clear Plate” mini-program has become popular among young Chinese and currently has nearly 1 million users.
Liu Jichen, founder of the startup that developed the app, said that the idea popped up at a dinner in 2017, when Liu found that a restaurant would give diners who polished off their food a card and offer small gifts after a certain number of cards had been collected.
“Such an idea can be realized online,” Liu said. He formed a team to work on the project.
Yet it was quite challenge for the AI system to identify whether the uploaded photos showed empty plates.
To make the AI system smarter, Liu and his team, assisted by more than 1,000 others, spent half a year collecting over 100, 000 samples in canteens and restaurants across the country and used the data to train neural network. Dozens of enterprises, institutions and restaurants have contacted the startup to cooperate on the project.
Through the visualized mini-program, people can clearly see the good results of saving food, which will effectively reduce waste, he noted. "We hope our efforts can start a new trend among the younger generation, encouraging them to carry out the virtue of cherishing food and developing the habit of thrift, " Liu said
1. What is the main function of the APP "Clear Plate?| A．Awarding credit points. | B．Giving charity meals. |
| C．Showing the empty plates. | D．Encouraging saving food. |
| A．Customers wasting food are punished. | B．People join in it on mini-program. |
| C．Restaurants limit customers' choices. | D．People are encouraged to buy gifts. |
| A．Getting other people to cooperate with the team. | B．Collecting samples in canteens and restaurants. |
| C．Ensuring the app to recognize empty plates. | D．Finding people to fund the app. |
| A．To introduce an app. | B．To promote saving food. |
| C．To praise a startup founder. | D．To raise fund for poor children. |
【推荐3】Research has shown that music has an important effect on one’s body and mind. In fact, there is a growing field of health care known as music therapy（疗法）, which uses music to treat diseases. Even hospitals are beginning to use music therapy. This is not surprising, as music affects the body and mind in many powerful ways.
Research has shown that quick music can make a person feel more alert（警惕的）, while slow music can produce a calm, deep thinking state. Also, research has found that music can change brainwave activity levels. This can help the brain to change speeds more easily on its own as needed, which means that music can bring lasting benefits to your state of mind, even after you’ve stopped listening.
Breathing and heart rates can also be influenced by music. This can mean slower breathing, slower heart rate. This is why music and music therapy can help reduce the damaging effects of long-term stress, greatly promoting (促进) not only relaxation, but health.
Music can also be used to bring about a more positive state of mind by helping to keep worries at bay. Music has also been found to bring many other benefits, such as lowering blood pressure and reducing the risk of strokes. It is no surprise that so many people are considering music as an important tool to help the body become or stay healthy.
1. According to the passage, what is music therapy?| A．It is a type of music. | B．It is the research about music. |
| C．It is a kind of musical effect on diseases. | D．It is the use of music to help treat diseases. |
| A．it is used by many hospitals | B．it can help change brainwaves |
| C．it does good to breathing and heart rates | D．it can bring a more positive state of mind |
| A．nervousness | B．lung diseases | C．strokes | D．high blood pressure |
| A．the importance of music therapy | B．benefits music can bring |
C．research on the effect of music  | D．diseases music can help heal |
