Last Sunday I made a visit to some new neighbors down the block. No specific purpose in mind, just an opportunity to sit at the kitchen table, have some tea and chat. As I did so, it occurred to me how rare the Sunday visit has become.

When I was a kid in the New Jersey of the 1960s, Sunday visits were routine. Most stores were closed, almost nobody worked, and the highways, as a result, were not the desperate steeplechases(障碍赛跑) they have become today. My family normally traveled eight city blocks to the home of my grandmother—the same house my father was raised in, where adults would sit on the front porch and chat while we children played hide-and-seek.

The Sunday visit was something to desire strongly. It was the repetition to church, our reward for an hour of devotion, an opportunity to take advantage of the fact that Dad was not at work, we were not in school, and there were no chores that couldn’t wait until Monday. Sunday was, indeed, different from all the other days of the week, because everyone seemed to be on the same schedule, which means that there was one day when everyone seemed to have time for everybody else.

    Sunday as a day of rest is, or was, so deeply rooted in the culture that it’s surprising to consider that, in a short span of time, it has almost entirely lost this association. In my childhood, it was assumed that everyone would either be home or visiting someone else’s home on Sunday.

But now the question is, “What do you plan to DO this Sunday?” The answer can range from going to the mall to participating in a road race to jetting to Montreal for lunch. If one were to respond, “I’m making a Sunday visit to family,” such an answer would feel sepia-toned, an echo from another era.

I suppose I should be grateful to live in Maine, a state of small towns, abundant land and tight relationships. Even though folks work as hard here as they do anywhere else, the state’s powerfully rural cast(特质)still harbors at least remnants of the ethic of yesterday’s America, where people had to depend on one another in the face of economic vagaries(反复无常的情况)and a challenging environment.

The writer’s general impression of the Sunday in the past was a day when _______.

A. everyone was paying a visit to some relative far away

B. everyone seemed to be free and could have some leisure

C. Dad was not at work while Mom was busy cleaning the house

D. nearly every adult would go to church and children were not at school

In the fourth paragraph, the writer compares the response “I’m making a Sunday visit to family” to an echo from another era because _______.

    A. people nowadays prefer staying at home on Sunday    

    B. such answers are rarely heard in our modern society

    C. people in the city dislike being disturbed on Sunday

    D. visiting someone on Sunday might take a lot of time

From the last paragraph we may infer that _______.

A. people in Maine suffer more from economic depression and the changed environment

B. people in Maine has abandoned their tradition and lived an absolute new life

C. land in Maine is short, thus the relationship between people is tense

D. people in Maine always help each other when they are in need

.Which word we may use to describe the writer’s attitude towards the Sunday today?

A. Unsatisfied.         B. Anxious.             C. Treasured.           D. Teased.                 

Not all think laughter is the best medicine, but it seems to help.So scientists carried on a new study of diabetes (糖尿病) patients who were given a good dose of humor for a year to prove it.

       Researchers divide 20 high-risk diabetic patients into two groups.Both groups were given standard diabetes medicine.Group L viewed 30 minutes of humor of their choice, while Group C, the control group, did not.This went on for a year of treatments.

       By two months into the study, the patients in the laughter group had lower level of the hormones epinephrine (肾上腺素), considered to cause stress, which is known to be deadly.After the 12 months, HDL cholesterol rises 26 percent in Group L but only 3 percent in Group        C.In another measure, C-reactive proteins, a maker of heart disease, drop 66 percent in the laughter group but only 26 percent in the control group.

       “The best doctors believe that there is a physical good brought about by the positive emotion, happy laughter,” said study leader Lee Berk of Loma Linda University.And other research has found that humor makes us more hopeful.Still, more study is needed, Berk said.The research by Berk found that humor can bring about similar changes in body chemistry, which was proved in the new study.The research result will be presented this month at the meeting in the US.Research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine shows that laughter causes the inner lining of blood vessels to expand, increasing blood flow in a way thought to be healthy.

       “Lifestyle choices have an important effect on health and these are choices which we and patients should pay attention to, rather than prevention and treatment,” Berk said in a statement this week.

Why did the scientists carry on the new research?

       A.To find out if laughter was good to health.

       B.To discover the best medicine to cure diabetes.

       C.Because the number of diabetic patients is the largest in the world.

       D.Because diabetic patients need more laughter than other patients.

After 12 months into the study, ___________.

       A.C-reactive proteins increase 66 percent in Group C

       B.the level of the hormones epinephrine stays the same in both groups

       C.the level of the hormones epinephrine has dropped

       D.C-reactive proteins reduced 66 percent in Group L

The underlined part “HDL cholesterol” in Paragraph 3 must be _______.

       A.something bad to our health       B.something good to our health

       C.a kind of wonderful medicine      D.a kind of dangerous disease

In what way does laughter benefit people’s health?

       A.Blood is made thick by laughter.        B.Laughter makes blood vessels thin.

       C.Laughter increases blood pressure.      D.Laughter makes blood flow fast.

According to Berk, we should _________.

       A.choose lifestyles carefully         B.change our lifestyles

       C.prevent our lifestyles in advance    D.pay less attention to the positive emotion

Do you want to live another 100 years or more? Some experts say that scientific advances will one day enable humans to last tens of years beyond what is now seen as the natural limit of the human life span.

“ I think we are knocking at the door of immortality (永生),” said Michael Zey, a Montclair State University business professor and author of two books on the future. “ I think by 2075 we will see it and that’s a conservative estimate.”

At the conference in San Francisco, Donald Louria, a professor at New Jersey Medical School in Newark said advances in using genes as well as nanotechnology(纳米技术) make it likely that humans will live in the future beyond what has been possible in the past. “ There is a great push so that people can live from 120 to 180 years,” he said. “ Some have suggested that there is no limit and that people could live to 200 or 300 or 500 years.”

However, many scientists who specialize in aging are doubtful about it and say the human body is just not designed to last about 120 years. Even with healthier lifestyles and less disease, they say failure of the brain and organs will finally lead all humans to death.

Scientists also differ on what kind of life the super aged might live. “ It remains to be seen if you pass 120, you know; could you be healthy enough to have good quality of life?” said Leonard Poon, director of the University of Georgia Gerontology Center. “ At present people who could get to that point are not in good health at all.”

By saying “ we are knocking at the door immortality”, Michael Zey means_____.

   A. they believe that there is no limit of living

   B. they are sure to find the truth about long living

   C. they have got some ideas about living forever

   D. they are able to make people live past the present life span

Donald Louria’s attitude toward long living is that_____.

   A. people can live from 120 to 180

   B. it is still doubtful how long humans can live

   C. the human body is designed to last about 120 years

   D. it is possible for humans to live longer in the future

70. The underlined “ it” (Para. 4) refers to_____.

   A. a great push                                   

B. the idea of living beyond the present life span

   C. the idea of living from 200 to 300                  

D. the conservative estimate

What would be the best title for this text?

   A. Living longer or not

   B. Science, technology and long living

   C. No limit for human life

   D. Healthy lifestyle and long living.

 

A. offers      B. influences      C. uncovered       D. exactly       E. big

F. found      G. campaigns      H. involved        J. properly       I. notion

What’s in a name? Letters offer clues to one’s future decisions, apparently. Previous studies have suggested that maybe a person’s monogram __1__ his life choices — where he works, whom he marries or where he lives — because of “implied self-esteem (自负),” or the temptation of positive self-associations. For instance, a person named Fred might be attracted to the __2__ of living in Fresno, working for Forever 21 or driving a Ford F-150.

Now a new study by professor Uri takes another look at the so-called name-letter effect and __3__ other explanations for the phenomenon. He analyzed records of political donations in the U.S. during the 2004 campaign — which included donors’ names and employers — and found that the name of a person’s workplace more closely related to the first three letters of a person’s name than with just the first letter. But he suggests that the reason for the association isn’t implied self-esteem, but perhaps something __4__ the opposite.

Duyck, one of the researchers whose previous work __5__ the name-letter effect, isn’t so quick to abandon the implied self-esteem theory. He pointed out that the sample group Uri studied may have biased the results: Uri analyzed the name-letter effect in a sample of people who donated money to political __6__. Still, Duyck notes that Uri’s theories are credible, and that even while some people may __7__ the same name of companies, employees may be tending to those companies because they start with the same letter as their names. In the end, whatever the explanation for the name-letter effect, no one really disputes that self-esteem is __8__ on some level. But the true importance of the effect is up for debate. “I can’t imagine people don’t like their own letter more than other letters,” says Uri, “but the differences it makes in really __9__ decisions are probably slim.”

 

A. offers      B. influences      C. uncovered       D. exactly       E. big

F. found      G. campaigns      H. involved        J. properly       I. notion

What’s in a name? Letters offer clues to one’s future decisions, apparently. Previous studies have suggested that maybe a person’s monogram __1__ his life choices — where he works, whom he marries or where he lives — because of “implied self-esteem (自负),” or the temptation of positive self-associations. For instance, a person named Fred might be attracted to the __2__ of living in Fresno, working for Forever 21 or driving a Ford F-150.

Now a new study by professor Uri takes another look at the so-called name-letter effect and __3__ other explanations for the phenomenon. He analyzed records of political donations in the U.S. during the 2004 campaign — which included donors’ names and employers — and found that the name of a person’s workplace more closely related to the first three letters of a person’s name than with just the first letter. But he suggests that the reason for the association isn’t implied self-esteem, but perhaps something __4__ the opposite.

Duyck, one of the researchers whose previous work __5__ the name-letter effect, isn’t so quick to abandon the implied self-esteem theory. He pointed out that the sample group Uri studied may have biased the results: Uri analyzed the name-letter effect in a sample of people who donated money to political __6__. Still, Duyck notes that Uri’s theories are credible, and that even while some people may __7__ the same name of companies, employees may be tending to those companies because they start with the same letter as their names. In the end, whatever the explanation for the name-letter effect, no one really disputes that self-esteem is __8__ on some level. But the true importance of the effect is up for debate. “I can’t imagine people don’t like their own letter more than other letters,” says Uri, “but the differences it makes in really __9__ decisions are probably slim.”

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