America is a mobile society. Friendships between Americans can be close and real, yet disappear soon if situations change. Neither side feels hurt by this. Both may exchange Christmas greetings for a year or two, perhaps a few letters for a while — then no more. If the same two people meet again by chance, even years later, they pick up the friendship. This can be quite difficult for us Chinese to understand, because friendships between us flower more slowly but then may become lifelong feelings, extending (延伸) sometimes deeply into both families.

Americans are ready to receive us foreigners at their homes, share their holidays, and their home life. They will enjoy welcoming us and be pleased if we accept their hospitality (好客) easily.

Another difficult point for us Chinese to understand Americans is that although they include us warmly in their personal everyday lives, they don’t show their politeness to us if it requires a great deal of time. This is usually the opposite of the practice in our country where we may be generous with our time. Sometimes, we, as hosts, will appear at airports even in the middle of the night to meet a friend. We may take days off to act as guides to our foreign friends. The Americans, however, express their welcome usually at homes, but truly can not manage the time to do a great deal with a visitor outside their daily routine. They will probably expect us to get ourselves from the airport to our own hotel by bus. And they expect that we will phone them from there. Once we arrive at their homes, the welcome will be full, warm and real. We will find ourselves treated hospitably.

For the Americans, it is often considered more friendly to invite a friend to their homes than to go to restaurants, except for purely business matters. So accept their hospitality at home!

1. The writer of this passage must be ______.

A. an American B. a Chines

C. a professor D. a student

2. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?

A. Friendships between Americans usually extend deeply into their families.

B. Friendships between Americans usually last for all their lives.

C. Americans always show their warmth even if they are very busy.

D. Americans will continue their friendships again even after a long break.

3. The underlined words “generous with our time” in Paragraph 3 probably mean ______.

A. strict with time B. serious with time

C. careful with time D. willing to spend time

4. A suitable title for this passage would probably be “______”.

A. Friendships between Chinese

B. Friendships between Americans

C. Americans’ hospitality

D. Americans’ and Chinese’s views of friendships

Exercise may help to safeguard the mind against depression(沮丧) through previously unknown effects on working muscles, according to a new study involving mice.

Mental health experts have long been aware that even mild, repeated stress can contribute to the development of depression and other mood disorders in animals and people. Scientists have also known that exercise seems to cushion against depression. But precisely how exercise, a physical activity can reduce someone’s risk for depression, a mood state, has been mysterious. So for the new study, researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm studied the brains and behavior of mice in a complicated and novel fashion.

We can’t ask mice if they are feeling cheerful or in low spirits. Instead, researchers have pictured certain behaviors that indicate depression in mice. If animals lose weight, stop seeking out a sugar solution when it’s available — because, probably, they no longer experience normal pleasures — or give up trying to escape from the cold-water zone just freeze in place, they are categorized as depressed. And in the new experiment, after five weeks of frequent but low-level stress, such as being lightly shocked, mice displayed exactly those behaviors. They became depressed.

The scientists could then have tested whether exercise blunts (延缓) the risk of developing depression after stress by having mice run first. But, frankly, from earlier research, they wanted to know how, so they bred pre-exercised mice. A wealth of earlier research by these scientists and others had shown that aerobic exercise, in both mice and people, increases the production within muscles of an enzyme (酶) called PGC-1alpha. The Karolinska scientists suspected(怀疑) that this enzyme somehow creates conditions within the body that protect the brain against depression. Then, the scientists exposed the animals, which without exercising, were in high levels of PGC-1alpha to five weeks of mild stress. The mice responded with slight symptoms of worry. But they did not develop depression. They continued to seek out sugar and fought to get out of the cold-water zone. Their high levels of PGC-1alpha appeared to make them depression-resistant(抵抗的). Finally, to ensure that these findings are relevant to people, the researchers had a group of adult volunteers complete three weeks of frequent endurance training, consisting of 40 to 50 minutes of moderate cycling or jogging. The scientists conducted muscle biopsies (活体检查) before and after the program and found that by the end of the three weeks, the volunteers’ muscle cells contained substantially more PGC-1alpha than at the study’s start.

The finding of these results, in the simplest terms, is that “you reduce the risk of getting depression when you exercise,” said Maria Lindskog, a researcher at the Karolinska Institute.

1.The researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm conducted the new study hoping to know ________.

A. if exercise cushions against depression

B. what can lead to depression in animals and people

C. if stress can contribute to the development of depression

D. how exercise contributes to reducing someone’s risk for depression

2.We can infer from the new experiment conducted by researchers at the Karolinska Institute that mice are depressed except when ________.

A. they attempt to escape from the cold-water zone

B. they stop searching for the sugar water

C. they stand still in place

D. they can’t experience normal pleasures any longer

3.Researchers asked a group of adult volunteers to complete three weeks of frequent endurance training in order to ________.

A. know if exercise can help to safeguard the mind against depression

B. know if they can endure 40 to 50 minutes of moderate cycling or jogging

C. ensure they can lose weight after moderate cycling or jogging

D. confirm the findings above are also relevant to people

4.It can be concluded from the passage that ________.

A. the mice with high levels of PGC-1alpha are easier to develop depression

B. athletes are more likely to develop depression than ordinary people

C. the enzyme called PGC-1alpha helps to reduce depression

D. in the past mental health specialists didn’t know exercise could help reduce depression

French surgeons have performed what they said on Wednesday was the world's first partial face transplant— giving a new nose, chin and lips to a woman attacked by a dog.

Specialists from two French hospitals carried out the operation on a 38-year-old woman on Sunday in the northern city of Amiens by taking the face from a brain-dead woman, who had hanged herself just hours before the operation. Her family agreed on the operation.

“The patient is in an excellent state and the transplant looks normal,” the hospitals said in a brief statement after waiting three days to announce the pioneering surgery.

The woman had been left without a nose and lips after the dog attacked her last May, and was unable to talk or chew properly. Such injuries are “extremely difficult, if not impossible” to repair using normal surgical techniques, the statement said.

The statement did not say what the woman would look like when she had fully recovered, but medical experts said she was unlikely to resemble the woman who had been the source of her new face.

The operation was led by Jean-Michel Dubernard, a specialist from a hospital in Lyon who has also carried out hand transplants.

Skin transplants have long been used to treat burns and other injuries, but operations around the mouth and nose have been considered very difficult because of the area's high sensitivity to foreign tissue.

Teams in France, the United States and Britain had been developing techniques to make face transplants a reality.

There was a short-term risk for the patient if blood vessels became blocked, a medium-term danger of her body rejecting the new skin and a long-term possibility that the drugs used could cause cancers.

Experts say that although such medical advances should be celebrated, the transplant had thrown up moral(道德的)and ethical(伦理的) issues. Little is known about the psychological effect of the transplant.

1.The best title for the passage would be ________.

A. First Face Transplant Opens Debate

B. French Woman has First Partial Face Transplant

C. A Complete Face Transplant of a French Woman

D. Risks and Ethical Problems of a Face Transplant

2.Which of the following is NOT one of the risks of the operation?

A. Heart damage.

B. Organ rejection

C. Block of blood vessels.

D. Side effect of the drugs.

3.What can we learn about the operation?

A. There has arisen a debate about the operation.

B. The woman had used the dead woman' s whole face.

C. The woman will suffer from psychological damage soon.

D. Such transplants have been performed by doctors.

根据短文内容,从短文后的七个选项中选出能填入空白处的最佳选项。选项中有两项为多余选项。

Writing A Letter To Your Future Self

Just imagine writing a letter to your future self 5 years from now, then opening it at that exact moment to see how much of it has come true. ____1.____

As you read the letter in the future, you can assess how many things agree with your expectations in the past. _2.______ Often times, the goals we set and our goal achievement process are affected by a lot of changes along the way. The letter lets you recognize how your current idea differs from the past.

In addition to that, at the very moment you are writing the letter, your thoughts are stored right there in those words. When you open the letter in the future, you as your future self gets to compare how you used to be in the past with how you are now. ___3.__. It’s very interesting to do so.

Take out a pen and paper right now and start writing your letter to your future self. Set a time period to write to. ____4.__ Then start writing. Think about the type of person you will be, your place in life, what you will have realized then, and so on.

5._____ Put it in a safe space where no one can find it. When you open this sometime in the near future, you might gain additional insights(了解) about yourself and your journey in the past few years.

A. And you can think about why that’s the case.

B. It is a useful tool to be used in goal achievement.

C. Imagine how you will be like during that time period.

D. If you haven’t, join me in writing a letter to yourself.

E. This lets you see how much things have changed since then.

F. At the end of the letter, write the date to open it on the cover.

G. It wasn’t until we moved into our new house that I found it again.

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