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[阅读小分队] 【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障14系列】【14-06】科技

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发表于 2013-2-4 17:48:49 | 显示全部楼层 |阅读模式
小年咯,先給大家拜個年,祝隊友們萬事如意、身體健康、閤家歡樂!

這是週二的作業哈~

(我運氣太好了,好多次都趕上過節,呵呵)

今天的閲讀量比較大,大家不要忙過年忘記閲讀了哦,特別是第二篇速度和越障。加油!


Why Dogs Are Smarter Than Cats
A not-so-smart best friend? Experiments in language and cognition show Fido's (sporadic) brilliance
By BRIAN HARE and VANESSA WOODS

[attachimg=262,394]113926[/attachimg]
【TIME 1】
With half as many neurons in their cerebral cortex as cats—and half the attitude, some would say—dogs are often taken to be the less intelligent domestic partner. While dogs drink out of the toilet, slavishly follow their master and need a chaperone to relieve themselves, cats hunt self-sufficiently and survey their empire with a regal gaze.

But cats beware. Research in recent years has finally revealed the genius of dogs.

Like other language-trained animals—dolphins, parrots, bonobos—dogs can learn to respond to hundreds of spoken signals associated with different objects. What sets dogs apart is how they learn these words.

If you show a child a red block and a green block, and then ask for the chromium block, not the red block, most children will give you the green block, despite not knowing that the word "chromium" can refer to a shade of green. Children infer the name of the object. They know that you can't be referring to the red block.

In 2004, Juliane Kaminski from Britain's University of Portsmouth and her colleagues published the results of a similar experiment with a dog called Rico who knew the names of hundreds of objects.

Dr. Kaminski showed Rico an object that he had never seen before, along with seven other toys that he knew by name. Then she asked Rico to fetch a toy using a word that was new to him, like "Sigfried." Just like human tots with the word "chromium," Rico was immediately able to infer that "Sigfried" referred to the new toy. Since the report on Rico, several other dogs have also been shown to make inferences this way. Dogs are the only animals that have demonstrated this humanlike ability.

Based on the ability of cats to hold a grudge, you might think that they have better memories than dogs. Not so. Several years ago, Sylvain Fiset of Canada's University of Moncton and colleagues reported experiments in which a dog or cat watched while a researcher hid a reward in one of four boxes. After a delay, they were allowed to search for the treat. Cats started guessing after only one minute. But even after four minutes, dogs hadn't forgotten where they saw the food.
[372]

【TIME 2】
[attachimg=262,174]113927[/attachimg]
Still, dog owners should not be too smug. In 2010, Krista Macpherson and William Roberts of the University of Western Ontario published a study that tested navigational memory, in which dogs had to search for food in a maze with eight arms radiating out from a central position. The researchers then looked at rats previously given the same test. They beat dogs by a wide margin.

Even the dog's closest relative, the wolf, beat its cousin when food was placed on the opposite side of a fence, as shown in a 1982 study by Harry and Martha Frank of the University of Michigan. In 2001, Peter Pongrácz and colleagues from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary published a study with an important qualification to this earlier finding: When the experimenters showed dogs a human rounding the fence first, the dogs could solve the problem immediately.

This is the secret to the genius of dogs: It's when dogs join forces with us that they become special.

Nowhere is this clearer than when dogs are reading our gestures. Every dog owner has helped her dog find a lost ball or treat by pointing in the right direction. No other animal—not even our closest relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees—can interpret our gestures as flexibly as dogs.

So are dogs smarter than cats? In a sense, but only if we cling to a linear scale of intelligence that places sea sponges at the bottom and humans at the top. Species are designed by nature to be good at different things.

And what might the genius of cats be? Possibly, that they just can't be bothered playing our silly games or giving us the satisfaction of discovering the extent of their intelligence.
[287]



Scientists Try to Unravel the Riddle of Too Much Sleep


【TIME 3】
Getting too little sleep is bad for your health. But getting too much—as wonderful as it may sound to some—can be problematic too.

The powerful need to nap during the day can be a warning sign of many health issues, from diabetes to depression, low thyroid or obstructive sleep apnea. When doctors rule out such explanations, it is called "primary hypersomnia," an umbrella term for several conditions that make sufferers crave sleep, despite getting 70 hours or more per week. One of the best known is narcolepsy, a neurological disorder that causes sudden, irresistible bouts of daytime dozing. Other forms aren't well understood.

Recently, researchers at Emory University in Atlanta have begun to unravel the mystery of this often-debilitating condition. They've found that some sufferers have a substance in their cerebrospinal fluid that acts like a natural sleeping pill. They think as many as 1 in 800 Americans may have the substance and that it may be a factor in other conditions that involve excessive drowsiness.

Many people with hypersomnia go undiagnosed, experts say. The excessive sleep urges often begin in late adolescence, and are easy to confuse with typical teenage sleep issues.

It tends to hit people in their young, formative years when they are trying to get started in a profession or having a family," says Dr. David Rye, a professor of neurology at Emory and lead author of a paper on the discovery, published last month in the journal Science Translational Medicine. "A lot of them get dismissed as lazy, or as drug seekers."

Researchers now know that this condition "is something real," says Andrew Jenkins, an associate professor of neuroscience, molecular and system pharmacology at Emory. "We know why you're sleepy—your brain is sedating itself," he says.
[294]

【TIME 4】
The Emory team discovered the mysterious sleep agent, or "somnogen," when Anna Sumner, a young Atlanta attorney, sought help at the sleep clinic in 2005. After napping prodigiously through college and law school (she says roommates at Princeton made up stories to cover for her), her sleep cravings began intensifying in her 20s. At one point, she says, "I'd go to bed one night and wake up two days later."

When the spells' frequency increased from once every two months to once a week, she says, "I had to take a leave from work."
After standard treatment with stimulants stopped working, the Emory doctors discovered that a substance in Ms. Sumner's spinal fluid was supercharging GABA, a natural sleep-inducing brain chemical. The effect was like being under constant twilight sedation. "I don't know how she was able to function," says Dr. Jenkins, whose team decided to try treating her with a drug called flumazenil, used in emergency rooms to counteract overdoses of sedatives. After several days in the hospital on an IV drip, she suddenly opened her eyes and said, "I feel alive!"

She has been taking it in a specially made lozenge form since then, and is feeling happily alert—and just learned she will be made a partner next year.

The Emory researchers think this same sleep-inducing substance in spinal fluid may play a role in other conditions that involve excessive drowsiness. They still haven't identified the exact chemical. But they can test for it in other patients by watching how their spinal fluid acts on GABA in a laboratory setting.

So far, they have found the somnogen in the spinal fluid of 32 sleep-clinic patients. They tested flumazenil on seven of them and found that it restored alertness in all of them to differing degrees. "I think what we've discovered is the biology. And the question is, what syndromes is it relevant to?" says Dr. Rye.

One may be narcolepsy, those irresistible sleep attacks that can hit multiple times a day. Sufferers go into REM sleep immediately when they nap, and tend to wake up refreshed—at least temporarily. Some also have cataplexy, which involves sudden loss of muscle control.
[363]

【TIME 5】
A rarer form of hypersomnia, called Kleine-Levin syndrome, occurs almost exclusively in teenage boys. Sufferers sleep for several days at a time, and when they wake up, they are irritable, ravenously hungry and sometimes hypersexual.

Dr. Rye and his colleagues have found the sleep-inducing spinal fluid in patients previously diagnosed with both conditions. They are also working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and hope to test for it in blood samples from people with chronic fatigue syndrome. They are also tracking how it travels in families. One-third of the 32 patients in the study have relatives with excessive sleepiness to varying degrees.

Since the study appeared, they have been fielding calls from other patients and sleep clinics—95 last week alone. "There is a huge unmet need of people who identify with Anna," says Dr. Rye, referring to Ms. Sumner.

Traditional treatments for hypersomnia, including stimulants such as Provigil, have proven to be effective sometimes with conditions like narcolepsy. But side effects can include a feeling of being "revved up."

Flumazenil, the drug used to treat Ms. Sumner, is proving hard to come by. Since it went off patent in 2008, the amount of the generic version produced annually for all of North America—enough to counteract 10,000 sedative overdoses—would supply only a handful of patients like Ms. Sumner, Emory researchers say.

But they are investigating other drugs that may have the same effect. Past research shows that one class of antibiotics may have a similar action at GABA receptors.

Of course, the vast majority of people with excessive daytime sleepiness don't have hypersomnia—most just don't get enough sleep at night. Shelby Harris, director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, N.Y., recommends that patients get at least eight hours of sleep nightly for two weeks before exploring other causes. "Make sleep a priority, and if that fixes it, great," she says. "If not, mention it to your primary-care doctor."

Indeed, many underlying health issues can also make people drowsy, including thyroid conditions, hormonal changes, vitamin deficiencies and infections; some can be ruled in or out with blood tests. Sleepiness is also a side effect of many medications, alcohol use or psychiatric conditions.

So many factors can affect alertness and energy levels, and they vary so much over the life span, that many people with sleep disorders never realize they have one. They often mask it with coffee or view drowsiness as just a fact of life.

Dr. Harris also recommends that people who think they are excessively sleepy keep track of when the drowsiness occurs. Nodding off after dinner or wanting to sleep till noon could indicate circadian rhythm disorders. "Afternoon slump"—the urge to nap at your desk after lunch—is a normal dip in the body's 24-hour clock.

"I tell patients to go out and take a walk when that happens," says Dr. Harris. "Being exposed to light can be more alerting than a cup of coffee."
[500]


Obstacle


Put a Stop to 'Do I Look Fat?'
When One Partner Is Overweight, Resolving Conflict in the Relationship Takes Two

[attachimg=262,174]113928[/attachimg]
Betsy and Jarom Schow agree that the biggest problem they've faced in 12 years of marriage isn't money, sex or parenting. It's weight.

Ms. Schow, 31 years old, was heavy for much of her life. When she was growing up, her family ate a lot of processed foods and takeout, and she rarely exercised, she recalls. In school, children "mooed" at her when she walked by. She started her first diet at age 12.

She met her future husband in college, in what she calls "a skinny period." Mr. Schow, now 36 and a software engineer, was outdoorsy and thin. The two went on hiking, skiing and rock-climbing dates. Even so, by the time they married in 2000, Ms. Schow had put on 25 pounds. Every year, it seemed she would lose 25 pounds and gain 30 back. By the Schows' fifth wedding anniversary, Ms. Schow weighed 220 pounds. And she was very unhappy about it.

Few subjects in a relationship are more difficult to talk about than one person's weight. Even people who aren't overweight can obsess about their appearance (sadly, these mostly tend to be women). How can a partner raise the issue with someone who is overweight without causing hurt or embarrassment? And how can an overweight person address his or her weight problem without obsessing and harming the relationship?

The Schows, who live in Alpine, Utah, stopped doing fun things together. When they went hiking, Ms. Schow would read a book at the trailhead, waiting for her husband to return. She stopped going to his parents' Sunday dinners because, surrounded by thin people, she felt embarrassed and judged. For several years, she and her husband slept in separate rooms because she felt anxious and uncomfortable in her body, and had trouble sleeping.

There were arguments. More than once, Mr. Schow asked his wife to change her outfit, saying, "That's not made for someone your size, Sweetheart." And there was the unforgettable occasion when Ms. Schow, "trying to spice things up in the bedroom," did a playful little dance, naked, she recalls. Her husband told her, "I guess you are one of those people who looks better with clothes on." (He apologized immediately but she still didn't speak to him for a week.)

Today, Mr. Schow says he has "no idea" why he blurted out such a thing. "I haven't lived it down yet," he says. He never found his wife unattractive, Mr. Schow says, but after she lost 75 pounds, and kept the weight off, he did feel more attracted to her.
Mixed-weight couples, where one partner is overweight and the other one isn't, have more relationship conflict, including arguments and feelings of anger and resentfulness, than same-weight couples, according to a study by researchers at the University of Puget Sound, in Tacoma, Wash., and the University of Arizona, in Tucson, published last month in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Of 43 heterosexual couples in the study, those who reported the most conflict were a healthy-weight man and an overweight woman. When just the man was overweight, couples reported no more conflict than same-weight couples.

The researchers said they don't know whether a weight difference caused couples to argue more, or whether conflict caused one partner to eat more and become overweight. Couples had less conflict when the overweight person reported feeling the partner was supportive of their efforts to exercise and eat a healthy diet. "That is significant because even though they are at risk for more conflict, there are communication mechanisms that can reduce this," says Tricia Burke, the study's lead author and visiting assistant professor in the communication studies department at the University of Puget Sound.

Another finding: Mixed-weight couples who ate together frequently reported more conflict than those who seldom ate together.

Ms. Schow recalls she would ask her husband to help her stick to her diet. Yet when he encouraged her to eat something healthy, she would accuse him of implying she was fat. "I was extremely frustrated," Mr. Schow recalls. "It felt like I was just saying the same things over and over, and we were stuck in this loop."

After they argued, Mr. Schow often left the house or hid in his room. His wife's deep unhappiness magnified their other problems, he says, whether it was money or how much time they spent together. He also worried about what her attempts at extreme dieting would do to her health.

The couple stopped having sex. Ms. Schow says she felt too self-conscious. "I would try and help her feel better about herself, telling her, 'You are beautiful the way you are,' " Mr. Schow says. He began to wonder: "If she doesn't want to have sex with me, what's wrong with me?" One night, Ms. Schow told her husband she wanted a divorce. "The weight caused a rift that just kept growing," she says.

Experts say it is imperative for couples to communicate in a loving way when one partner has a weight problem. Catherine Hastings, a marriage and family therapist in Lancaster, Pa., says a person who isn't overweight should address the issue with an overweight partner "in a way that makes them feel that you are rooting for them. The worst thing is when you are teasing or nagging or judging."

A spouse should say things that demonstrate support. The question "Are you really going to eat that?" doesn't demonstrate support.

A healthy-weight partner should consider ways to show a willingness to team up to change behaviors. For example, the partner could ask the overweight loved-one for suggestions. Should you avoid keeping sweets in the house or skip dessert when dining out together? Almost everyone could stand to get more exercise and eat a more-healthy diet, and the healthy-weight partner can help by being a role model.

The person who isn't overweight also should be aware of his or her own insecurities and possibly a subconscious need to sabotage the partner's weight-loss efforts. "The overall atmosphere should be, 'I love you and I want you to be around for as long as possible,' " Dr. Hastings says.

After Ms. Schow raised the issue of divorce and was throwing clothes in a suitcase, she told her husband she wanted out because she felt trapped—in the marriage and her own misery. Mr. Schow calmly walked to the garage and let the air out of the tires of her jeep. "I felt that if I could calm her down and get her feeling better, we could work toward a resolution," he recalls.
Ms. Schow didn't leave. But she did continue to complain about her weight. Then one night, as she was talking yet again how she was about packing on pounds, her husband said sleepily, "Turn off your thinker and go back to sleep."

That seems, in hindsight, like the turning point, Ms. Schow says. She stopped the extreme dieting and concentrated on counting calories and getting exercise, eventually running four times a week and doing yoga and Zumba. After she lost 40 pounds, her husband told her that his dream was to run a marathon with her. They ran the Park City marathon together in August 2011.

Ms. Schow lost 75 pounds in 10 months. The couple began hiking, biking and rock climbing again—and teaching their 3- and 6-year-old daughters to be active. Ms. Schow wrote a book about her experience, "Finished Being Fat," published earlier this month.

The Schow's marriage improved. "The fact that my weight isn't such a focus in our marriage anymore—because I made it bigger than it had to be—gives us an opportunity to change the discussion, instead of an endless loop of 'I am fat.' 'No, you aren't,' " Ms. Schow says. "As I started to fix myself, I stopped fighting myself, so I stopped fighting him, too."
[1309]

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发表于 2013-2-4 20:12:34 | 显示全部楼层
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
发表于 2013-2-4 21:53:21 | 显示全部楼层
qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq
发表于 2013-2-4 21:54:24 | 显示全部楼层
这么靠前,还是好好说说话吧,大家一起加油坚持把
发表于 2013-2-5 09:33:08 | 显示全部楼层


2'40
Dog is smarter than Cat, which is sound approved in a study. Dog
also have a similar ability to obtain a new word as human been do.
1'49
However, dog is not as smart as rats or even its casin, wolf. what's
more, after training, dogs can recognize master's gesture even more
prisicely than human's relative Chimpanzee.
2'09
too little sleep is bad for your health, but getting too much can be problematic too.
If you are tired druing daytime, it may show a disorder of your body. In fact, you are sleepy because your brain is sedating itself.
2'56
A patientm an attorney, can sleep once for two days. The Emory team found that in her spin there is a material that kind like hyponosis.
3'54
There is another patient have similar problem with Summar. But effective way treating hypersomnia always lead to side effects.
Not all phenomenon that desire sleeping in the work time belong to this disease. Some times it caused by the lack of sleep in night. Thus, we should take 8 hours sleep during night.
And good way to solve this problem is going out to take a walk.
8'21
By sharing the experience of a couple who lose weight and save their marrige successfully, the writher tell the readers that If your face an problem do not focus on the problem itself, but on how to fix it. Just as the husband said'stop thinking'.
A funny phenomenon is that in a family, if the husband have a normal weight while his wife overweight, they tend to quarrel about the weight issue more.
发表于 2013-2-5 10:29:01 | 显示全部楼层
1 2:55
2 2:15
3 3:21
4 2:44
5 3:43
6 待续
发表于 2013-2-5 10:51:48 | 显示全部楼层
看看~
发表于 2013-2-5 12:05:24 | 显示全部楼层
2.36    (第一段有点不知所云 谁帮我指点指点)The author talks about the interlectual difference between the cat and the dog.The passage firstly indicates that dog could respond to different things and then demonstrated the similarity in young human babies, as a result of the experiment. Then researchers conducted an experiment to prove whether dog has a better memory(后来检查发现是cat), but consequently, they were wrong.

2.24   Several experiments, including the one between wolf and dog, and the other one between dog and rat have been conducted and resulted that dogs performed worse than did other animals. Then author doubts why dogs , when they are with our human beings, could performe better. In the end ,the author tries to work out whether cats are smart, but acturally the author realized that due to the revolution, each kind of animal has its own strong point(s).


2.03  Under both conditions which you want sleep too little and which you want sleep too much , people could be problmatic. The writer suggests that people ,if they strongly hope to have a snap, they might suffer from disease ranging ... from ....., and this suffering could be originateed from later period in adolescent. Moreover, .记不得啦。。。。。

2.30  A victim ,also a volunteer student from Princton, came to doctors and received the treatment. Finally ,she felt revived, and came to better after a kind of substance xxxx was found by doctors and reduced.

3.50  这个没好好回忆。。。。

Ob:

A story between a man and overfact woman is the clue of the whole passage, and what matters or the solution to the problem stemming from the huge weight gap is to convert altitude , being positive to chanllege.
发表于 2013-2-5 17:13:01 | 显示全部楼层
先顶起
发表于 2013-2-5 17:44:13 | 显示全部楼层
2'38
2'04
2'07
2'26
2'54

7'57
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