Looking for a low-cost path to self-knowledge? A way to mine your subconscious① for clues to your motivations, desires and fears? No need to have years of treatment or analysis. Just look to your dreams.

“You can ignore your dreams, but you are really doing harm to yourself,” says Lauri Quinn Loewenberg. “If so, you’re letting red flags pass you by, letting great ideas pass you by.”

Some sleep researchers believe dreams are more directly related to our moods and emotions and can serve as tools to self-understanding. Dreams occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) cycles of sleep each night. For adults, that means about every 90 minutes. The first period of REM sleep may be short, 5 to 10 minutes, followed by longer periods, finally reaching an hour or more in the fourth or fifth period.

When people are dreaming, brain scans show a lot of activities. The brain is online during dreams. The experiences you have during the day are connected during dream sleep. People we know or experiences we’ve had at different times in our lives may be different in the same dream.

AmyBeth Gilstrap has had the same recurring② dream that annoyed her since Hurricane Katrina drove her and her daughter and friends out of New Orleans. Ms. Gilstrap says, “It is always spies. My job is to get people to some place.” She’s certain the dream is related to her effort in the hurricane to help several families leave. Sometimes her cats also are part of that dream. That’s because she went back into New Orleans, before it was allowed, to rescue her cats.

Today, through brain scans scientists have known that the parts of the brain that control emotion and long-term memory are active during REM sleep.

1. The passage is mainly to tell readers ______.

  A. dreams are mainly caused by hard work     B. dreams can offer us key to self-knowledge

  C. dreams are only activities of our brains      D. how dreams help us solve our problems

2. According to the words from Lauri Quinn Loewenberg, ______.

  A. dreams can make you feel badly ill         B. you often have red flags in your dreams

  C. dreams will make your life colorful         D. you may get great help from your dreams

3. According to the passage, the underlined word “it” in Paragraph 5 refers to ______.

  A. Ms. Gilstrap’s dream   B. Ms. Gilstrap’s job   C. Hurricane Katrina   D. New Orleans

4. According to the passage, when you are dreaming at night, ______.

  A. your dream is connected with your work that day

  B. the dream will generally last about 5 to 10 minutes

  C. the longer dream should be in the later part of the sleep

  D. your eyes will still move slowly during the time

Looking for some inspiration or the “write” kind of ideas for your creative stories? To start with, some writers describe winter by using their five senses or their imagination. Others write on their favorite winter activity. Whatever you choose to write about, working on a winter story can always help to improve your writing skills. Now read the following story and see if it helps get rid of any icy writing block you’ ve been struggling with.
A Winter Adventure 
Beep, beep. Beep-beep: the alarm clock rang. Slowly, I got out of warm bed down onto the wooden floor which the winter had thrown its cold upon. The bitter cold temperature penetrated   （穿透）my socks and I hurried to put my feet in shoes.
Looking out of the window, I watched the white snow, soft and thick, drop onto rooftops and trees. Half an hour later, finishing the last of my hot chocolate, I prepared to enter the adventure that waited for me outside. I buttoned my jacket and fastened my boots. Hat on, I opened the door and was greeted by the winter coldness.
In the depths of winter, the early morning did not have the rush of the rest of the year. Most of my neighbours were put off by the cold, and stayed in bed until the sun had climbed higher into the sky.
Unseen by those who remained locked inside their homes, warm in their beds, I enjoyed being alone with the beauty of the wintertime. Those indoors were unable to appreciate the snow-scapes, ice crystals, frost and the crisp（清新的）breeze. For them, the coming of winter meant just the arrival of the cold.
Appreciation depends on contrasts. One cannot love the warmth of April if one has not known the freezing cold of winter. Later that year, the heat of the sun on my skin would be all the more wonderful for my memories of that cold morning and others like it.
【小题1】The underlined word “adventure” refers to____________.

Looking for a new weight loss plan? Try living on top of a mountain. Mountain air contains less oxygen than air at lower altitudes, so breathing it causes the heart to beat faster and the body to burn more energy. A handful of studies have found that athletes training at high altitudes tend to lose weight. Doctor Florian Lippl of the University Hospital Of Ludwig-Maximilians-university Munich wondered how the mountain air would affect overweight individuals if they weren’t doing any more physical activity than usual.
Lippl and his colleagues invited 20 overweight men to an environmental research station about 300 meters below the summit of Zugspitze, a mountain around 2,970 meters near the Austrian border. They were allowed to eat as much as they liked. The men also gave blood so that researchers could test for hormones linked to appetite and fatness. At the end of the week, the men, whose mean weight starting out was 105kg, had lost on average about l.5kg. The men’s blood pressure also dropped, which the researchers believed was due to weight lost.
Exactly what caused the weight loss is uncertain. Loss of appetite is common at higher altitudes, and indeed the men ate significantly less than usual—about 700 calories fewer per day. Lippl also notes that because their consumption was being recorded, they may have been more self-conscious about what they ate. Regardless, eating less accounts for just l kg of the l.5 kg lost, says Lippl. He thinks the increased metabolic (新陈代谢的) rate, which was measured, also contributed to weight loss but cannot separate the different effects with the given data.
Appetite loss at high altitudes could certainly be key, notes Damian Bailey, a physiologist at the University of Glamorgan, UK, who recently lost 11 kg during a 3-month expedition to the Andes in Chile.   
Unfortunately, for the average person there is no treatment that can resemble living at high altitude, says Lippl. The only alternative is hypobaric chamber, which exposes subjects to low oxygen and isn’t practical as a treatment. He says, half- jokingly, “If fat people plan their holidays, they might not go to the sea, but maybe to the mountain.”
【小题1】What contributes the most to one’s heart rates according to the first paragraph?

1.As a volunteer in the child center, __________

A．you should follow the schedule of the center strictly

B．you must keep the child you look after indoors

C．you will earn some money for what you have done

D．you yourself can decide how long to stay there

2.What may NOT be needed if you apply to Wilder Research program?

A college degree and library experience.

B. Having knowledge of the Internet.

C. Being willing to help others

D. Being able to handle emergencies.

3.From the third advertisement, we can learn that __________．

A．only individuals can apply for the job

B．applicants should pay close attention to detail

C．applicants are required to do some physical work

D．applicants will deliver flyers homes in the neighborhood.

4.The three advertisements _________．

A．are not all for part-time opportunities

B．are not all chances to make some extra money

C．all can be communicated on the Internet

D．are offered by the same organization