2 . A man with advanced Parkinson’s disease (帕金森氏症) is now able to walk almost normally again thanks to electrodes implanted (电极植入) in his spinal cord (脊椎), researchers said on Monday. The medical first was achieved by Swiss researchers who had previously pioneered similar breakthroughs to help disabled people walk again.

“This could be a game-changing technology to help bring back movement in people with advanced Parkinson’s,” said David Dexter, research director at Parkinson’s UK.

Marc Gauthier, the 62-year-old patient who lives in France, has suffered from the brain disorder for about 30 years. Like more than 90 percent of people with advanced Parkinson’s, Mar c has had great difficulty walking. What are known as “freezing” experiences — during which patients are unable to move for a limited time, putting them at risk of falling — are particularly awful, Marc told AFP.

Much remains unknown about Parkinson’s disease, making treatment difficult. But the disease can seriously affect the lives of patients, sometimes keeping them to bed or a wheelchair. So when the opportunity came to go through an operation in Switzerland, Marc gladly accepted the chance.

“Now I can do whatever I want,” Marc says. “I can go for a walk and go out shopping by myself.” He adds that he can now walk much more easily — he is even planning a trip to Brazil — but it still requires concentration, particularly when climbing upstairs.

The Swiss team, led by surgeon Jocelyne Bloch and neuroscientist Gregoire Courtine , implanted a complex system of electrodes called a “neuroprosthesis (神经假体)” at important points along Marc’s spinal cord. The neuroprosthesis was first tested on animals, and then implanted in Marc, who has used it for roughly eight hours a day over nearly two years.

The Swiss team has expanded their experiment to a group of six Parkinson’s patients, aiming to know how it could help others, given the disease affects people in different ways. However, treatment using the implant could be quite expensive, potentially limiting how many patients would have access.

3 . A few months ago, I was down with a terrible cold which ended in a cough that was hard to get rid of. No matter how many different medicines I tried, I_________couldn’t get rid of the cough. Not only did it_________my teaching but also my life as a whole.

Then one day after class, a student came up to me and_________ traditional Chinese medicine. From description Chinese medicine sounded as if it had magic power that_________. I was_________   because I knew so little about it and have never tried it before. _________ my cough got so much worse that I couldn’t sleep at night, so I decided to give it a_________.The Chinese doctor took my pulse and asked to see my tongue, both of which were’ new experience to me because they are both_________ in Western medicine, where diagnosis relies heavily on_________. Then the doctor gave me a scraping (刮) treatment known as “Gua Sha”. I was a little __________ at first because he used a smooth edged tool to scrape the skin on my neck and shoulders.

A few minutes later, the treatment started to produce a__________effect and my body and mind began to sink deeper into__________. I didn’t feel any improvement in my__________in the first couple of days, but after a few more regular visits to the doctor, my cough started to __________. Then within a matter of weeks, it was completely__________ !