Forget counting sleep. Next time you are having trouble going to sleep，try putting on a jazz CD.
Researchers have shown just 45 minutes of relaxing music before bedtime can make for a restful night.
The Taiwanese researchers studied the sleeping patterns of 60 elderly people with sleep problems. They told the Journal of Advanced Nursing how the technique was easy to learn and lacked the side effects of other treatments. The study participants were either given a choice of music to listen to before going to sleep or nothing at all. The music group were able to choose from six tapes that featured soft, slow music—around 60-80 beats per minute—such as jazz, folk or orchestral pieces.
Listening to music caused physical changes that aided restful sleep, including a lower heart and respiratory(呼吸的) rate, the researchers found.
The people in the music group reported a 35% improvement in their sleep, including better and longer night-time sleep and less dysfunction(机能障碍) during the day.
Lead author Professor Hui-Ling Lai, of the Buddhist Tzu-Chi General Hospital and the University of Taiwan, said, “The music group reported a 26% overall improvement in the first week and this figure continued to rise as they mastered the technique of relaxing into sedative(安神的) music.”
Professor Jim Horne, from the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University, said, “If anyone is a bit agitated before they go to bed, then anything that can help calm them down and relax is a good thing.”
“Some say making sure older people sleep less in the afternoon and get plenty of exposure to daylight can help them get a better night’s sleep.”Listening to music before going to sleep ________.
| A．is better than other treatments to help you sleep |
| B．can cure some diseases as well as sleeplessness |
| C．is a necessary step for the elder |
| D．can improve one's taste for music |
Listening to music has some help on the elder EXCEPT ________.
| A．sleep well |
| B．lower heart rate |
| C．increase blood cycle |
| D．lower breath rate |
The underlined word “agitated” means “________”．
| A．relaxed |
| B．disappointed |
| C．nervous |
| D．surprised |
What's the best title for the passage?
| A．People will benefit from music |
| B．The relation between sleeplessness and music |
| C．A research shocks the world |
| D．Listen to music to help you sleep |
Child labor — the employment of children in industry, often against their will — has been a problem for many years. Over a hundred years ago, Charles Dickens shocked many of his readers when he described the conditions under which young children worked in British factories. The conditions Dickens described continue almost unchanged today in many parts of the world. The only difference is that today employment of children is confined（limited）to small industries and family businesses, such as hotels, restaurants and particularly farms, rather than to large factories.
Girls suffer more from child labor practices than boys. Many of them are forced to start work when they are only ten years old. Although the work they are given to do is often light, it is often harmful to the health. Recently, children as young as six years were found to be working in Asian factories, and the children were working from eight to fourteen hours a day in overcrowded and unhealthy working conditions. Sometimes a whole family group is employed, with the payment going to a parent or older relative. The children not only receive nothing or very little for their long hours of work, but also they are prevented from attending school. Therefore, when they become older they are unable to do any other kind of work.
The solution to the problem of child labor is clearly better laws to protect young children, greater supervision（监督）of industry and heavier fines for those who break the laws. Only in this way can young boys and girls be allowed to enjoy the most valuable time of their lives—childhood.Which’s the main idea of the first paragraph?
| A．Children are often willing to work in large factories. |
| B．Most children are working in British factories. |
| C．The poor working conditions of child labor in Dickens’ novel. |
| D．The working conditions for children are similar to those a hundred years ago. |
Girls’ work is ____.
| A．not harmful to the health though it is heavy |
| B．not harmful to the health because it is light |
| C．harmful to the health though it is light. |
| D．harmful to the health because it is heavy |
Young children go to work ____.
| A．because they are forced to | B．in order to be skillful in a certain kind of work |
| C．in order to be paid well | D．in order to earn money for education |
To solve the problem of child labor, the writer suggests the following BUT ____.
| A．looking over factories more closely |
| B．raising their payment and improving the system of education |
| C．improving laws of protecting children’s interests |
| D．punishing lawbreakers with severer fines |
The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people’s work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a discouraging thought. But, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its history show, hasn’t meant economic freedom.
Employment became widespread when the enclosures（圈地运动）of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by taking them away from the use of the land, and thus from the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people’s homes. Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people traveled longer distances to their place of employment until, eventually, many people’s work lost all connection with their home lives and the places in which they lived.
Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. In pre-industrial times, men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community. Now it became customary for the husband to go out to paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife. Tax and benefit regulations still assume this norm（准则）today, and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles between sexes.
It was not only women whose work status suffered. As employment became the dominant form of work, young people and old people were kept out — a problem now, as more teenagers disappointed and annoyed at school and more retired people want to live active lives.
All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some efforts and resources away from the utopian（乌托邦）goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full-time jobs. From the passage we can learn that ____.
| A．jobs have existed since human came into being |
| B．the industrial age brought jobs to everyone |
| C．the industrial age brought the work patterns most people’s work has taken |
| D．in the future more and more people could get jobs as the industry is developing |
Before the enclosures of the 17th and 18th, people lived mainly on ____.
| A．paid work | B．unpaid work | C．taxes and benefits | D．land |
Before the industrial age women played ____.
| A．more important roles in making a life | B．less important roles in making a life |
| C．roles as weak as after in raising their children | D．roles as important as men in supporting a family |
From the passage we can infer that ____.
| A．creating jobs for all must be changed |
| B．enough jobs must be created by our society |
| C．more and more jobs are being created |
| D．industrial age has made many people unable to live without full-time jobs |
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A line of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes marched across the South on Friday, peeling away roofs, overturning cars and killing at least 11 people in Tennessee, officials said.
It was the second wave of violent weather to hit the state in less than a week. Last weekend, tornadoes killed 24 people in the western part of the state and destroyed more than 1,000 homes and buildings.
The storms crossed an area from northern Mississippi to northern Virginia as they moved to the northeast late Friday after developing from a low-pressure system in the central Plains.
The Nashville suburbs were the hardest hit, with at least eight deaths happening northeast of the city. Three more people were killed in a rural area about 65 miles southeast of Nashville.
Tornadoes were also reported in some other places. The storms pulled up trees, knocked down power lines and damaged buildings. What’s worse, phone lines and most businesses were out of service. Hospitals admitted at least 60 people with storm-related injuries and transferred at least nine badly injured patients to Nashville hospitals.
In southern Indiana, the storms damaged some areas with golf ball-sized hail. High winds blew the roof off a country club and overthrew a semitrailer（拖车）. As the storms moved farther east, parts of West Virginia were lashed with heavy rain and winds, great damages caused.
The number of tornadoes in the US has jumped through the first part of 2006 compared with the past few years. Through the end of March, an estimated 286 tornadoes had hit the US, compared with an average of 70 for the same three-month period in each of the past three years.
The number of tornado-related deaths was 38 before Friday's storms. The average number of deaths from 2003 to 2005 was 45 a year, the prediction center said. How many deaths have the thunderstorms and tornadoes on Friday caused?
| A．Three. | B．Eight. | C．Eleven. | D．Twenty-two. |
Which of the following statements is NOT true?
| A．Tennessee was hit twice by tornadoes within a week. |
| B．The latest tornado might start in northern Mississippi. |
| C．At least four states were hit by the tornado. |
| D．In the tornadoes of the first 3 months 38 people were killed. |
In the first 3 months of last 3 years, about ____ tornadoes happened each month in the US.
| A．About 23. | B．About 70. | C．About 98. | D．About 210. |
We can infer from the report more deaths and injuries were caused because ____.
| A．the phone lines were destroyed | B．there were enough hospitals |
| C．the people hid in their houses | D．there was also a hail in Tennessee |
The Red Cross is an international organization which cares for people who are in need of help. A man in a Paris hospital who needs blood, a woman in Mexico who was injured in an earthquake, and a family in India that lost their home in a storm may all be aided by the Red Cross.
The Red Cross exists in almost every country around the world. The world Red Cross organizations are sometimes called the Red Crescent, the Red Mogen Daid, the Sun, and the Red Lion. All of these agencies share a common goal of trying to help people in need.
The idea of forming an organization to help the sick and wounded during a war started with Jean Henri Dunant. In 1859, he observed how people were suffering on a battlefield in Italy. He wanted to help all the wounded people regardless of which side they were fighting for. The most important result of his work was an international treaty called the Geneva Convention(日内瓦协定). It protects prisoners of war, the sick and wounded, and other citizens during a war.
The American Red Cross was set up by Clara Barton in 1881. Today the Red Cross in the United States provides a number of services for the public, such as helping people in need, teaching first aid and providing blood.A good title for this passage is .
| A．People in Need of Help | B．Safety and Protection |
| C．The International Red Cross | D．Forming an Organization to Help People |
The word “aided ” in the first paragraph means .
| A．needed | B．helped | C．caught | D．protected |
The author really tries to make the reader see that this organization .
| A．costs very little money | B．works in many nations |
| C．teaches first aid if necessary | D．is called the Sun |
We may draw a conclusion (下结论)that during a war.
| A．the Red Cross only protects the wounded |
| B．the Red Cross only helps prisoners of war |
| C．the Red Cross only helps citizens |
| D．the Red Cross helps all the people in need no matter which side they are fighting for |
Until late in the 20th century, most Americans spent time with people of generations. Now mid-aged Americans may not keep in touch with old people until they are old themselves. That’s because we group people by age. We put our three-year-olds together in day-care center, our 13-year-olds in school and sports activities, and our 80-year-olds in senior-citizen homes. Why?
We live away from the old for many reasons: young people sometimes avoid the old to get rid of fears for aging and dying. It is much harder to watch someone we love disappear before our eyes. Sometimes it’s so hard that we stay away from the people who need us most.
Fortunately, some of us have found our way to the old. And we have discovered that they often save the young.
A reporter moved her family onto a block filled with old people. At first her children were disappointed. But the reporter baked banana bread for the neighbors and had her children deliver it and visit them. Soon the children had many new friends, with whom they shared food, stories and projects. “My children have never been less lonely,” the reporter said.
The young, in turn, save the old. Once I was in a rest home when a visitor showed up with a baby. She was immediately surrounded. People who hadn’t gotten out of bed in a week suddenly were ringing for a wheelchair. Even those who had seemed asleep wake up to watch the child. Babies have an astonishing power to comfort and cure.
Grandparents are a special case. They give grandchildren a feeling of security and continuity. As my husband put it, “my grandparents gave me a deep sense that things would turn out right in the end.”
Grandchildren speak of attention they don’t get from worried parents. “My parents were always telling me to hurry up, and my grandparents told me to slow down,” one friend said. A teacher told me she can tell which pupils have relationships with grandparents: they are quieter, calmer, more trusting.Now in an American family, people can find that ____.
| A． children never live with their parents |
| B．grandchildren are supported by their grandparents |
| C． aged people are supported by their grandchildren |
| D．not all working people live with their parents |
The reason why old people are left alone may be that ____.
| A． the old don’t like to live in a big family |
| B． the young can’t get enough money to support the old |
| C． different generations have different lifestyles |
| D． the old are too weak to live with the young |
The fact that the reporter told us shows that ___.
| A．old people in America lead a hard life |
| B．old people in America enjoy banana bread |
| C．she had no time to take care of her children |
| D．old people are easy to get along with |
Seeing a baby, the old people get excited because ____.
| A．the baby brought them the image of life |
| B．the baby was clever and beautiful |
| C．they had never seen a baby before |
| D．the baby’s mother would take care of them |