阅读理解

　　How can you find out what is going on inside a person’ s body without opening the patient up?Regular X-rays can show a lot．CAT scans can show even more．They can give three-dimensional(三维)view of body organs(器官)．

　　What is a CAT scan?CAT stands for Computerized Axial Tomography(层面X线照相术)．It is a special X-ray machine that gets a 360-degree picture of a small area of a patient’s body．

　　Doctors use X-rays to study and examine diseases and injuries within the body．X-rays can find foreign objects inside the body or to take pictures of some organs inside if special things as dyes or special liquids are added to the organs to be X-rayed．

　　A CAT scanner, however, uses a beam(光束)of X-rays to give a cross-sectional view of a particular part of the body．A fine beam of X-rays is scanned across the body and circled around the patient from many different angles(角度)．A computer analyzes(分析)the information from each angle and produces a clear cross-sectional picture on the screen．

　　This picture is then photographed for later use．Several cross-sections, taken one after another, can give a clear“photo”of the entire body or of any body organs．The newest CAT scanners can even give a clear picture of active, moving organs just as a fast-action camera can“stop the action”giving clear pictures of what appear only mistily(模糊)to the eye．And because of the 360-degree pictures, CAT scans show 3-dimensional views of organs in a manner that was once only seen during surgery or autopsy(examining a dead body)．

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阅读理解

　　Women don’t talk more than men．Really, they don’t．Women speak 20,000 words a day, compared to the average man’s 7,000．But a study published recently denies this old rule．Both men and women use about 16,000 words a day, says the new research in Science magazine．

　　“It’s been a common belief, but it just didn’t fit,” says James Pennebaker, the researcher of the seven-year study．Pennebaker and his colleagues analyzed(分析)recorded conversations of 396 university students age 18 to 29 in the USA and Mexico, including 210 women and 186 men．The study didn’t look at vocabulary or word use, but rather word count．

　　Pennebaker says two-thirds of participants spoke 11,000 to 25,000 words a day, with the average for both sexes about 16,000 words．The finding may seem surprising in a popular culture where women are often thought of as talkative and men as silent．

　　Most recently, psychiatrist(精神病学家)Louann Brizendine used the 20,000 and 7,000 comparison in her 2006 book The Female Brain, as evidence for brain differences．After the book came out in August, the data was widely reused．“That hits a nerve(神经)．It’s been surprising to me that this little point is the point people pick out,” says Brizendine．

　　But experts in neurolinguistics(神经语言学)thought that the data was uncertain．Mark Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, says that after Brizendine’s book came out, he tried to find evidence to support her claim, but failed．

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