We desire to believe that we can get fit without effort. We invent chocolate-chip cookie diets to make us thin while eating fat. We wish to get fit from doing nothing. We wish to lie in bed, think about going to the gym and then, get the body of a Greek god.

A new study from Brian Clark at Ohio University shows that sitting still, while just thinking about exercise, might make us stronger. Clark and his colleagues asked 29 volunteers and wrapped their wrists in surgical casts for a whole month. During this month, half of the volunteers thought about exercising their immobilized (使不动)wrists. For 11 minutes a day, 5 days a week, they sat completely still and focused their entire mental effort on pretending to flex their muscles. When the casts were removed, the volunteers that did mental exercises had wrist muscles that were two times stronger than those who had done nothing at all.

The idea behind the research is not a new concept-just a concept that’s often neglected in the field of neuroscience(神经科学): our bodies and our brains develop together. Even though we treat our mind and bodies as two separate things(brain vs brawn; mind vs matter), they are finally and closely connected.

Indeed, even before Brian Clark published his study, other researchers had explained links between the brain and the muscles. Ten years ago, Guang Yue at the Cleveland Clinic reported that imaginary exercise increases the strength of finger muscles by up to 35%. Just five years ago, Kai Miller at the University of Washington, showed that imaginary exercise activates the same brain areas that are activated during real exercise. Brain Clark's research adds to this body of knowledge and provides believable facts about the role of neuromuscular(神经肌肉的) pathways in strength training.

1.What's the purpose of chocolate-chip cookie diets?

A.To keep strong. B.To grow thinner. C.To keep fat. D.To have muscles

2.The experiment proves that .

A.wrapping their wrists may be quick B.showing their muscles needs efforts

C.sitting still might make us stronger D.thinking about exercise is so useful

3.Which of the following concepts is often neglected according to the passage?

A.Our mind and bodies are two separate things B.Our bodies and brains develop together

C.Our mind has a close relation to bodies D.Our mind has little effect on our brains

4.What's the best title for the passage?

A.How to grow stronger without lifting weights. B.How to carry out a muscle exercise program.

C.How to prevent muscle from growing thinner. D.How to provide pathways in strength training,

Most of us fear failure. However, without failure, progress would be impossible. In fact, the word success comes from the Latin succedere, meaning “to come after.” And what does success usually come after? Failure. It seems that one cannot exist without the other.

Every failure – even the worst ones – helps us learn to do things differently in the future. “Learning from the past mistakes and making changes helped me to reach the top of Everest successfully,” says mountaineer Pete Athans, who has now reached the world’s highest peak (山峰) seven times. Failure also reminds us that things can go wrong – sometimes with terrible results.

Austrian Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner is the first woman to reach the top of all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks without extra oxygen (氧气). In 2007, while climbing in Nepal, she was in an avalanche ( 雪 崩 ). She survived, but two nearby Spanish climbers died. The experience taught Kaltenbrunner that no matter how prepared a person is, bad things can still happen. But Kaltenbrunner decided she had to learn from her experience and move on.

Accepting failure is not easy for many, though. We are often reluctant to tell people that we are failures because our good name depends on success. However, things are slowly changing. In the past ten years, some scientific magazines – mostly in medicine – have published reports of failed experiments. The belief is that the science community can also learn from “negative” results and that this can finally lead to positive outcomes.

The business world already understands the value of negative results. Eli Lilly and Company has failure parties to study data about medicine that doesn’t work. In fact, one of the business world’s most famous failures became one of its biggest successes. In the early 1990s, Apple Corporation created the Apple Newton. It was one of Apple’s biggest failures. However, Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, believed the product had potential (潜力) and he began to improve it. In time, this led to the creation of the iPhone and the iPad, two of the company’s most successful products.

The story of the Apple Newton can teach us another important lesson about failure. There is a lot we can learn by studying mistakes. Perhaps the most important lesson is that failure and success are two sides of the same coin. One truly cannot exist without the other.

1.The writer writes Paragraph 2 and 3 mainly to .

A.show how bad things can become important lessons

B.tell us that it’s possible for anyone to be successful

C.prove how bad things can happen in any situation

D.teach us what not to do when climbing mountains

2.The underlined word “reluctant” in Paragraph 4 probably means “ ”.

A.unable B.unsure C.unwilling D.uninterested

3.What is the passage mainly about?

A.An attitude towards failure.

B.The experience of success.

C.A difficult way to success.

D.The rewards of failure.

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