The first time Fred Gillis noticed something was wrong, he was on the ice, holding his hocky stick but somehow unable to shoot the puck (冰球). Was middle age catching up with him,     1     was it something more serious? Over the following months Gillis’s arms continued to weaken. Soon it     2     (take) two hands to brush his teeth, and he couldn’t lift a plate to clear the dinner table. Gillis was 52 in 2015 when he got the diagnosis he feared most: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (渐冻症). “Fred had a co-worker     3     had ALS,” recalls Fred’s wife. “He wanted to die from anything but that.”

Recently Linda hasn’t felt herself. She was a really good student, but her grades     1    (fall) since three months ago. This is because she sometimes has trouble putting her heart into her study. She also refuses     2    (talk) with teachers and friends. What’s worse, she feels     3    (tire)all the time but has     4    (difficult) in falling asleep. Her behavior attracts her mother’s attention. Her mother asks her     5    happens to her, but she just cries.

As     6    matter of fact, Linda is suffering from clinical depression(临床抑郁症).What is clinical depression? It can be described as a mood which is so low that it affects your daily life     7    (serious).The first signs of it in teens are     8    (poor) school reports than before, learning difficulties and staying away from classmates and teachers. If you have these     9     (sign), don’t worry. It is not so difficult to deal     10    clinical depression. There are many effective ways, such as medicine, small talk, more exercise and a balanced diet.

5 . Poor Sleep and Loneliness: A Vicious Cycle?

The feeling of being lonely is the sense that you have less social contact with others than you want. It is not quite the same as the amount of social contact you have. Some people don’t engage that often with others, but they are perfectly fine with that, and so they don’t feel alone.     1     Being lonely is associated with poorer psychological health.

One area of research has focused specifically on the relationship between loneliness and sleep. There are several inter-related questions: Is feeling lonely related to the quality of people’s sleep? What aspects of sleep are related to loneliness? And does loneliness cause sleep problems, or do difficulties with sleeping lead to feelings of loneliness?     2    

The relationship between loneliness and sleep was explored in a paper by Melanie Hom and Caol Chu in the September 2020 issue of Clinical Psychological Science. They analyzed the data of previous studies relating sleep quality to feelings of loneliness.     3     This relationship is stronger for insomnia (失眠症) than for sleep complaints like nightmares. In addition, the more loneliness people express, the less effective they think their sleep is.

Although poor sleep and loneliness are closely related, it is hard to determine whether loneliness causes sleep difficulties or the reverse (相反).

    4     It is because you can look to see whether sleep difficulties at one time predict later feelings of loneliness or whether loneliness early on predicts later sleep difficulties. Interestingly, sleep problems predicted later loneliness and loneliness predicted later sleep difficulties. However, the connection between earlier sleep difficulties and later loneliness was generally stronger than that between earlier loneliness and later sleep difficulties. This pattern suggests that there may be a vicious cycle, though, in which poor sleep can increase feelings of loneliness, which can in turn increase sleep difficulties.

If you are someone who has trouble sleeping, be aware that poor sleep lowers your resilience (复原力) overall. Among other things, it may make it harder for you to appreciate the social contacts you have.     5     That added social engagement just might have a positive impact on your future sleep.

6 . It was a great shock to me to discover that I had a serious disease. I had never been very well coordinated (协调)physically when I was_______. But things seemed to change when I went to university, at the age of 17, I started to _______ some sports.

In my third year at university, however, I noticed that it seemed to be difficult for me, and I fell over once or twice for no obvious _______ My father took me to the family doctor who led me to a good _______. Two days later, I went into hospital for examinations. I stayed in the _______ for two weeks, during which I had a wide variety of tests. But after all the _______, they didn't tell me what I had, except that I was a special case. However, they _______ it to continue to get worse. The doctor felt sorry because he could do _______ except giving me vitamins (维生素), I could see that he didn't _______ the vitamins to have much effect on my disease. I didn't feel like asking for more details, because the disease was obviously ________ .

I realized that I had a(n) ________ disease. It was a bit of a shock. However, while I had been in hospital, I had seen a boy who had leukemia (白血病) and he ________ died of that kind of disease. Clearly there were people who were ________ than me. At least my condition didn't make me feel sick, so whenever I felt ________, I remembered that boy.

The doctors told me to go back to university. I ________ doing the research I had started before going to hospital. My dreams at that time were rather hard to ________ Before my condition had been diagnosed (诊断), I had been very bored with life. But shortly after I came out of hospital, I ________ realized that there were a lot of worthy things I could ________. I began to make progress in my ________ and I got married to a girl called Jane, whom I had met just about the time my condition was diagnosed. That marriage ________ my life. It gave me something to live for.

Since Bird Flu first appeared in 1997, it     1     (take) more than a hundred lives. Many people fear it could be the next     2     (globe) epidemic, especially as scientists who studied tissue from the bodies of people     3     died of the 1918 Spanish Flu proved that Bird Flu is a modern adaptation of the same virus.

8 . Following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP), also named COVID-19 by WHO, there is a general fear of the unknown virus as its full effects remain to be seen. Fever, coughing, sore throat, difficulty breathing —the NCP’s symptoms are similar to the common cold or the flu, but it’s potentially more dangerous.

Viruses could be deadly, like HIV and Ebola. But what are viruses? How can they cause so much trouble?

Viruses are non-living organisms (有机体) approximately one-millionth of an inch long. Unlike human cells or bacteria, they can’t reproduce on their own. Instead, they invade the cells of living organisms to reproduce, spread and take over.

Viruses can infect every living thing – from plants and animals down to the smallest bacteria. For this reason, they always have the potential to be dangerous to human life. Sometimes a virus can cause a disease so serious that it is fatal. Other viral infections trigger no noticeable reaction.

Viruses lie around our environment all of the time, waiting for a host cell to come along. They can enter our bodies by the nose, mouth, eyes or breaks in the skin. Once inside, they try to find a host cell to infect. For example, HIV, which causes AIDS, attacks the T-cells of the immune system.

But the basic question is, where did viruses first come from? Until now, no clear explanation for their origin exists. “Tracing the origins of viruses is difficult”, Ed Rybicki, a virologist (病毒学家) at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, told Scientific American, “because viruses don’t leave fossils and because of the tricks they use to make copies of themselves within the cells they’ve invaded”.

However, there are three main hypotheses (假说) to explain the origin of viruses. First, viruses started as independent organisms, then became parasites (寄生者). Second, viruses evolved from pieces of DNA or RNA that “escaped” from larger organisms. Third, viruses co-evolved with their host cells, which means they existed alongside these cells.

For the time being, these are only theories. The technology and evidence we have today cannot be used to test these theories and identify the most plausible explanation. Continuing studies may provide us with clearer answers. Or future studies may reveal that the answer is even murkier (含糊不清的) than it now appears.

9 . How to Treat Hoarding Disorder(囤积症)

Many of us struggle to part with treasured belongings, but for years Stephanie Evans felt too hard to leave everything she‟d ever bought.     1     Her bedroom, meanwhile, was so full of piles of clothes that, until recently, she had to sleep on the sofa in the living room.

Stephanie suffers from hoarding disorder, thought to affect an estimated 3.4 million people in the UK to some degree. But, like many, she didn‟t think it was something doctors would treat.     2     In fact, hoarding is recognized as a psychiatric disorder(精神疾病) by the World Health Organization. It can be associated with other mental health conditions such as depression and social anxiety, etc. Those affected people will collect anything, such as clothes, newspapers, photos, even printouts of emails.

    3     If a person lost something important in the childhood, he or she would resist any further losses. That‟s why hoarders refuse to part with things. Hoarding can have far-reaching effects on a person‟s life. People can lose their children and their homes due to hoarding.

Hoarding disorder, like many other illnesses, can never really be “cured”.     4     Clearing out someone‟s overcrowded house is rarely effective on its own, because he or she will just fill it up again. If and when hoarding disorder is diagnosed, the mental health professional, the patient‟s primary care physician, and any specialists or other professionals involved will work together to develop a coordinated treatment. For most people with hoarding disorder, cognitive behavioral therapy(认知行为治疗) with a mental health professional is the first choice treatment. It can often help the hoarders accept that there is a problem, and then possibly develop solutions.

Because hoarding disorder is still relatively new as a distinct condition, treatment plans may be somewhat less standardized. For instance, there is still disagreement regarding if and how to use medicine to treat hoarding disorder.     5    

10 . Researchers at Brigham found about one in five teenagers now have some degree of hearing damage. The researchers did not say why hearing loss has risen, but other experts have strong suspicions. One likely culprit, they say, is MP3 players.

An MP3 player can be dangerous to hearing when its decibel level is turned up too high. High-decibel sounds can damage nerve endings, called hair cells. If a sound is loud enough, the damage can be permanent. A loud sound can shake the membrane (薄膜) on which the hair cells sit- “like an earthquake”. That shake can break or even uproot hair cells. When that happens, the hair cells are finished. Human ears cannot regrow hair cells. Therefore, when listening to an MP3 player, set a volume limit and avoid exposure to loud sounds.

On the other hand, the loudness of today’s music may not be totally under your control. Music companies have been purposely turning up the volume. It’s a trend called the fight for loudness.

Play a CD from the 1990s. Then play a newly released tune. Don’t touch the volume control. You’ll probably notice that the new CD sounds louder than the old one. Why? Sound engineers who create CDs are using dynamic range compression (压缩), a technology that makes the quiet parts of a song louder and the loud parts quieter. The overall effect of compression is a louder recording.

Many musicians and sound engineers aren’t pleased. They say that compression is driving down the quality of today, s music, making it sound flat and blaring. Gray Hobish, a sound engineer, explains that music should be a combination of loudness and softness. But music companies want to make music louder so it will stand out. That’s important in the competition among recording companies.

What about listeners? Many teenagers listen to music on the go in noisy places and through headphones, all of which reduce sound quality. So young listeners may not notice the poorer quality of modem recordings. “To their ears,” says Hobish, “the music sounds fine. And they are not aware of the hidden threat of the music they are enjoying.”