Motherhood may make women smarter and may help prevent dementia(痴呆) in old age by bathing the brain in protective hormones(荷尔蒙) , U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
Tests on rats show that those who raise two or more litters of pups do considerably better in tests of memory and skills than rats who have no babies, and their brains show changes that suggest they may be protected against diseases such as Alzheimer’s(早老痴呆症). University of Richmond psychology professor Craig Kinsley believes his findings will translate into humans.
“Our research shows that the hormones of pregnancy(怀孕) are protecting the brain, including estrogen(雌激素), which we know has many neuroprotective (保护神经的) effects,” Kinsley said.
“It’s rat data but humans are mammals just like these animals are mammals,” he added in a telephone interview. “They go through pregnancy and hormonal changes.”
Kinsley said he hoped public health officials and researchers will look to see if having had children protects a woman from Alzheimer’s and other forms of age-related brain decline.
“When people think about pregnancy, they think about what happens to babies and the mother from the neck down,” said Kinsley, who presented his findings to the annual meeting of the Society of Neuroscience in Orlando, Florida.
“They do not realize that hormones are washing on the brain. If you look at female animals who have never gone through pregnancy, they act differently toward young. But if she goes through pregnancy, she will sacrifice her life for her infant—that is a great change in her behavior that showed in genetic changes to the brain.”
51. How do scientists know “Motherhood may make women smarter”?
A. They know it by experimenting on rats. B. Many women say so.
C. Some researchers have told them. D. They know it through their own experience.
52. What does the phrase “litters of pups” mean in the second paragraph?
A. Old rats. B. Animals. C. Baby rats. D. Grown-up rats.
53. What can protect the brain of a woman according to the passage?
A. Estrogen. B. Taking care of children.
C. More exercise. D. The hormones of pregnancy.
54. “It’s rat data but humans are mammals just like these animals are mammals.” What does the sentence suggest?
A. The experiments on the rats are much the same on humans.
B. The experiments on the rats are very important for animals.
C. The experiments on the rats have nothing to do with humans.
D. The experiments on the rats are much the same on other animals.
55. Which title is the best for this passage?
A. Do You Want to Be Smarter? B. An Important Study
C. Mysterious Hormones D. Motherhood Makes Women Smarter
Children, especially boys, tend to idealise their fathers when they are young.Every little boy wants to grow up to be just like his father, and every little girl thinks her father is the smartest man on the earth. It’s not very easy to be a good father, but it’s not that difficult either. Children will truly enjoy spending time with their fathers, not just when they are kids, but even when they are adults.
Not all children communicate well with their fathers. Communication is often left to mothers, while fathers dispense advice as and when necessary. Don’t expect all conversations to centre around the dinner table. Go to your children’s bedrooms and talk to them about school, their teachers or their friends. Remember that the conversation cannot be one-sided. When your children open up to you, you also need to open up to them.
If your children come home from school feeling upset, go up to them and ask them what is the matter. And if it is something which seems to you to be a silly reason to be upset, don’t voice your opinion. It may be silly to you, but to your children it is important enough. So don’t wave the topic away by telling them not to bother about such stupid things. Simply discussing their problems with them will help them feel better.
Don’t shy away from having discussions about your teenage children’s love lives. Generally speaking, your children are definitely not going to discuss intimate details with you. Try to let them know that you are relaxed about topics on love. Tell your children how you met your wife. It is perfectly normal for children to go through feelings for the opposite sex as they grow up, and by keeping the topic closed for discussion, you are only shutting them off from discussing their feelings with you. All they will do is turn to their friends.To children their fathers are usually very ______.
| A．important | B．great | C．serious | D．strong |
From the second paragraph we can know that ______.
| A．some children don’t like their fathers at all |
| B．talking with children around the dinner table is bad |
| C．it is better for mothers to communicate with their children |
| D．mothers usually communicate better with their children. |
Suppose your children are worried about something you should _____.
| A．have a talk with them | B．express your option |
| C．keep silent | D．let them alone |
Your children would not like to discuss their love lives with you probably
because they think__________.
| A．you are relaxed about topics on love |
| B．they should ask for help from their friends |
| C．they have already grown up |
| D．it is not normal to experience feelings of love |
When I asked my daughter which item she would keep; the phone, the car, the cooker, the computer, the TV, or her boyfriend, she said” the phone”. Personally, I could do without the phone entirely, which makes me unusual. Because the telephone is changing our lives more than any other piece of technology.
Point 1 The telephone creates the need to communicate, in the same way that more roads create more traffic. My daughter comes home from school at 4:00 pm and then spends an hour on the phone talking to the very people she has been at school with all day. If the phone did not exist, would she have anything to talk about?
Point 2 The mobile phone means that we are never alone. “The mobile saved my life,” says Crystal Johnstone. She had an accident in her Volvo on the A45 between Otley and Skipton. Trapped inside, she managed to make the call that brought the ambulance(救护车) to her rescue.
Point 3 The mobile removes our secret. It allows marketing manager of Haba Deutsch, Carl Nicolaisen, to ring his sales staff all round the world at and time of day to ask where they are , where they are going, and how their last meeting went.
Point 4 The telephone separates us. Antonella Bramante in Rome says, “We worked in separate offices but I could see him through the window. It was easy to get his number. We were so near——but we didn’t meet for the first two weeks!”
Point 5 The telephone allows us to reach out beyond our own lives. Today we can talk to several complete strangers simultaneously ( 同时地) on chat lines (at least my daughter does. I wouldn’t know what to talk about). We can talk across the world. We can even talk to astronauts (if you know any) while they’re space-walking. And, with the phone line hooked up to the computer, we can access(存取) the Internet, the biggest library on Earth. How do you understand ‘Point 1 —The telephone creates the need to communicate,…’？
| A．People don’t communicate without telephone. |
| B．People communicate because of the creating of the telephone. |
| C．People communicate more since telephone has been created. |
| D．People communicate more because of more traffic. |
Which of the following best shows people’s attitude towards mobile phones?
| A．Mobile phones help people deal with the emergency. |
| B．Mobile phones bring convenience as well little secret to people. |
| C．Mobile phones are so important and should be encouraged. |
| D．Mobile phones are part of people’s life. |
Which points do you think support the idea that phones improve people’s life?
a. Point 1. b. Point2. c. Point3. d. Point 4. e. Point 5.
| A．c, d | B．a, e | C．a, c | D．b, e |
It is possible to talk to several complete strangers simultaneously through .
| A．the TV screen | B．a fax machine |
| C．the phone line hooked up to the computer | D．a microphone |
The best heading for the passage is.
| A．Phone Power | B．Kinds of Phone |
| C．How to Use Phones | D．Advantage of Phones |
A large number of women in Western European countries wish that they were born men. The number is said as high as 60% in Germany.
“Women often wish that they had the same chance as men have, and believe it is still men’s world.” Said Dr James Holden, one of the scientists who did the study. Anne Harper has a very good job for an international oil company. She also believes in“Women’s Liberation(解放)”.
“I don’t wish that I were a man,” she says, “and I don’t think many women do .But I do wish that people would stop looking down upon us women. At work, for example, we often do the work that men do but we get less paid. There are still a lot of jobs that are usually the best ones that open only to men. If you’re a man, you have a much better chance of leading an exciting life. How many women pilots are there or engineers or scientists?”What can we learn from the first paragraph?
| A．There are more Western European women wishing to be born men. |
| B．Women in Western European countries wish to deliver boy-babies. |
| C．60%women in Germany wish that they were born men. |
| D．60% Western European women wish that they were born men. |
“it is still men’s world.” means “______.”
| A．There’re more men than women in the world |
| B．There’re more men scientists or engineers in the world |
| C．Women cannot live on themselves without men |
| D．Women have not been given the same chance as men |
The “believes in” in paragraph 2 can be explained as _______.
| A．feels sure of the value of | B．is sure of the existence of |
| C．has some trust in | D．learns something from |
Anne Harper considers that women should ______.
| A．be really liberated | B．live a better life than men |
| C．be well paid | D．get better jobs than men |
Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?
| A．Usually the best jobs are open to men not to women. |
| B．Women are less paid than men for doing the same job. |
| C．Men pilots, engineers and scientists are more than women ones. |
| D．Women are looked down upon as the second-class citizens. |
Charlie works in a post office. His father lost his job five years ago and his mother is often ill. And he has two brothers and a sister. He works hard and tries his best to buy enough food for his family.
Last month his family had to move to an old house outside the city. It's farther from the post office and he has to get up early in the morning in order to catch the 6:30 train. The head of his office is strict and everybody has to get there on time. He knows what it'll mean if he's late. A friend of his had pity on(同情) him and lent his old car to him. The young man was happy and from then on he could go to work by car.
Last Saturday Charlie went to buy some medicine for his mother. Bad luck! When he came out of the shop, he couldn't find the car. He was quite worried and began to look for it in front of the shop but he didn't find it. Suddenly he saw a woman parked a car there and hurried into the shop. Charlie saw the car wasn't locked. He got on it and drove it at once. He was afraid the loser would run after him and drove fast. A truck hit it at a crossing and he lost consciousness.(知觉)
This morning the young man came back to life and saw there were a few policemen standing by his bed. He asked, "Where am I?"
"In Room 103."
"In hospital or in prison ?"There’re ________ people in Charlie's family.
| A．four | B．five | C．six | D．seven |
Charlie’s family moved to the old house outside the city because _______.
| A．it's very quiet there | B．they hoped to save some money |
| C．he could get to his office by train | D．his father had found a job there |
Charlie has to get to his office on time because ___________.
| A．the head is strict with them | B．he wishes to be praised |
| C．he's usually on duty | D．he's afraid to be fired |
For did Charlie buy any medicine last Saturday?
| A．himself | B．his father |
| C．his sister. | D．his mother |
Charlie was afraid ________, so he drove fast.
| A．to be late | B．to meet the red lights |
| C．to be caught by the loser | D．to miss the 6:30 train |
An early invention by Albert Einstein has been rebuilt by scientists at Oxford University. They are trying to develop an environmentally friendly refrigerator that runs without electricity.
We all know that modern fridges cause damage to the environment. They work by using a kind of man-made greenhouse gas called Freon (氟里昂), which is far more damaging than carbon dioxide.
Now Malcolm McCulloch, an electrical engineer at Oxford, is leading a three-year project to develop appliances that can be used in places without electricity.
His team has completed a prototype (样机) of a fridge patented in 1930 by Einstein. It used only pressurized gases to keep things cold. The design was partly used in the first refrigerators, but the technology was dropped when more efficient compressors (压缩机) became popular in the 1950s. That meant a switch to using Freon.
Einstein's idea uses butane (丁烷) and water and takes advantage of the fact that liquids boil at lower temperatures, when the air pressure around them is lower.
"If you go to the top of Mount Qomolangma, water boils at a much lower temperature than it does when you're at sea level and that's because the pressure is much lower up there," said McCulloch.At one side is the evaporator (蒸发器), a bottle that contains liquid butane. "If you introduce a new vapor above the butane, the liquid boiling temperature decreases and, as it boils off, it takes energy from the surroundings to do so," says McCulloch. "That's what makes it cold."
The gas fridges based on Einstein's design were replaced by Freon-compressor fridges partly because Einstein's design was not very efficient. But McCulloch thinks that by changing the design and replacing the types of gases used it will be possible to quadruple (翻两番) the efficiency.
However, McCulloch's fridge is still in its early stages. "It's very much a prototype," he said. "Give us another month and we'll have it working." According to the passage, an early invention by Albert Einstein _______.
| A．has been rediscovered because it costs much less and works more efficiently |
| B．is being redesigned because it could be used in places without electricity |
| C．has just been found to be energy-saving and environmentally friendly |
| D．will be fully made use of and become the fridge of the future |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?
| A．Freon was used in fridges long before the 1950s. |
| B．Freon is what makes current fridges big polluters. |
| C．McCulloch thinks he could improve Einstein's design by using other types of vapors. |
| D．The fridge Malcolm McCulloch and his team designed will be put into production soon. |
We can learn from the text that the prototype completed _______.
| A．changed the air pressure around it |
| B．was tested on the top of Mount Everest |
| C．increased the liquid boiling temperature |
| D．used only pressurized gases to keep things cold |
McCulloch's words in Paragraph 6 _____.
| A．serve as an explanation for the principle behind Einstein's fridge |
| B．give you the reason why Einstein's fridge was not efficient |
| C．tell you how to take advantage of low air pressure |
| D．show you how Einstein's fridge works |