考研时文阅读（17A）(2009-04-04 21:21:15)转载标签：分类：阅读篇考研时文阅读黄涛杂谈篇章分析本文是一篇说明文，主要介绍了两位博士对午睡和健康关系的一项最新研究。

第一段提出了有关午睡的话题，并以一些名人的午睡特点来加以例证，接着介绍了纳斯卡和特里克伯罗斯所进行的研究，说明午睡可以延长人的生命；第二段进一步详细地阐述其研究的结果；第三段作者驳斥了地中海饮食可能影响实验结果可信度的说法；在第四段里，特里克伯罗斯博士建议人们为了健康尽量午睡。

Sloth(怠惰, 懒惰) may be seen as a sin, but some of history's most accomplished men were fond of lounging around. Leonardo da Vinci enjoyed napping. So did Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill. Richard Buckminster Fuller advocated taking 30-minute naps every six hours. No one has yet proved a correlation between napping and artistic brilliance or professional success, but an intriguing study published this week claims to find a link between daytime siestas and good health. A team of researchers led by Androniki Naska and Dimitrios Trichopoulos of Harvard's School of Public Health followed over 23,000 Greek patients with no history of cancer or stroke, for an average of six years. Their conclusion: napping just might save your life.The study found that the group of adults who took 30-minute siestas at least three times a week had a third fewer deaths from heart disease than an equivalent group who did not sleep at all during the day. The benefit was greater for men than for women. It was also greater for working males than for those who had retired.However, a number of previous studies done in the Mediterranean and in parts of Central America (where siestas remain common) have come up with conflicting results, but Dr. Naska and Dr. Trichopoulos argue that those studies have often been flawed. The subjects in some, for example, had survived heart attacks and may therefore have benefited more from napping than healthy individuals do.Given that all of the subjects of this new study were Greeks; could themuch-celebrated Mediterranean diet deserve credit, rather than the siestas? The firm answer from Dr Trichopoulos is “No”. And he is in a good position to say so, for it was he who did the pioneering research that put olive oil and a plant-based diet on the scientific map in the first place. Unlike some other nap studies, his was controlled for diet, smoking, exercise and other relevant variables. The earlier findings about the benefits of the Mediterranean diet are confirmed, he says, and napping seems to help on top of that.Before buying a sofa for the office, however, it might be wise to consider the possibility of selection bias. Dr Trichopoulos concludes that “Type A” personalities, whose hard-working lives may make them prone to heart attacks, are also much less likely to take naps during the day. That bias might be distorting the study's results. Even so, he advises, “Take a nap if you can.”参考译文懒惰也许会被人们认为是一种罪过，但是历史上一些最成功的人士却喜欢悠闲懒散的生活。

列奥纳多·达芬奇喜欢午睡，阿尔伯特爱因斯坦和温斯顿丘吉尔也一样喜欢午睡。

里查德巴克明斯行福勒提倡每隔6个小时就小睡30分钟。

没有人能够证明午睡与杰出的艺术才能或者事业上的成功有相互关系，但是本周一份引人入胜的研究报告声称发现了日间午睡与健康之间的一种联系。

一个由安德罗尼基·纳斯卡和哈佛公共卫生学院的特里克伯罗斯所领导的研究小组对23,000名没有癌症或者中风记录的希腊病人，进行了长达6年的研究，该研究结果表明：午睡有可能延长人的生命。

这项研究发现，那些每周至少午休3次，且每次午睡至少30分钟的成人组与日间从不午休的成人组相比，患心脏病致死的概率低了1/3。

男性从午睡中的获益比女性更加明显。

上班的男性比退休人士的获益更为明显。

但是，在午休仍然普遍的地中海地区和中美洲的部分地区曾进行过的一些研究得到的却是与此矛盾的结果，不过纳斯卡博士和特里克伯罗斯博士认为这些研究都存在问题。

比如，一些曾经有过心脏病发作史的研究对象从午睡中的获益相对于那些健康人要明显得多。

鉴于所有的研究对象都是希腊人，那些影响因素是否是驰名的地中海饮食而不是午休呢？特里克伯罗斯博士坚定地回答说“不”。

他的回答是令人信服的，因为正是他开创性地将橄榄油和以素食为主的饮食放到科学领域内来进行研究。

与其它关于午休研究不同的是，他的研究控制了饮食、吸烟、运动和其他相关的变量。

他说，早前关于地中海饮食益处的研究已经得到了肯定，而午睡在饮食的基础上也起到了最为重要的作用。

在办公室添臵沙发之前,最好还是先考虑一下选择性偏见的可能性。

特里克伯罗斯博士认为那些辛勤工作从而易发心脏病的“A型”个性的人，在白天小睡比较少。

这些偏见也许会与研究报告的结果相矛盾。

即便如此，特里克伯罗斯博士还是建议，“如果可以的话就小睡一会吧”。

考研时文阅读（17B）(2009-04-04 21:24:01)转载标签：黄涛考研时文阅读杂谈分类：阅读篇篇章结构分析本文论述了肥胖在人与人之间的相互影响及其相互影响这一问题。

第一段通过一个最新研究来引出人们越来越肥胖这一话题；第二段用具体数据进一步阐述了这一研究结果；第三段论述了朋友关系对于肥胖的不同影响及其原因；第四段指出家庭关系和兄弟姐妹关系对肥胖有影响，但并不重要，真正重要的原因是其社会标准。

最后一段提出人与人之间的这种相互影响关系也同样适用于减肥。

核心词组participate in 参加，参与in the context of 在…背景下，在…环境下identify…as…把…当作是for one thing 首先，第一have …to do with 与…有关as much …as 与…一样多，与…一样也是be involved in 与…有关，卷入到after all 毕竟According to the new research appearing in the July 26 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, obesity isn't just spreading; rather, it may be contagious between people, like a common cold. Researchers from Harvard and the University of California, San Diego, reviewed a database of 12,067 densely interconnected people who had all participated in a major American heart study between 1971 and 2003. It was that information that the NEJM authors mined to explore obesity in the context of a social network.From their analysis, when a study participant's friend became obese, that first participant had a 57% greater chance of becoming obese himself. In pairs of people in which each identified the other as a close friend, when one person became obese the other had a 171% greater chance of following suit. James Fowler, a political scientist at UC San Diego says that it's not just that people who share similar lifestyles become friends. For one thing, geographic distance between friends in the study seemed to have no impact: friends who lived a 5-hour drive apart and saw each other infrequently were just as influenced by each other's weight gains as those who lived close enough to share weekly take-out meals or basketball games.The best proof that friendship caused the weight gain, says Fowler, is that people were much more likely to pattern their own behavior on the actions of people they considered friends — but the relationship didn't work in the other direction. If you had named another person as a friend, and your friend became obese, then you were more than 50% more likely to get fat too. But if your friend had not named you as a mutual friend, and you became obese, it would have no significant impact on your friend's weight.Spouses share meals and a backyard, but the researchers found a much smaller risk of gaining weight—a 37% increase—when one spouse became obese. Siblings share genes, but their influence, too, was much smaller, increasing each other's risk 40%. Fowler believes the effect has much more to do with social norms: whom we look to when considering appropriate social behavior. Having fat friends makes being fat seem more acceptable.Fowler and Christakis say that the contagion-effect should hold just as much for weight loss as it does for weight gain. "I would hope this influences individuals to get friends and families involved in decisions about health," Fowler says. After all, he says, a weight-loss plan may be more effective if the people closest to you are on a diet. And, if you're successful, your good health will help others achieve a healthy weight too. The impact extends not just to your friends; it turns out — but also to your friends' friends, and even to their friends.参考译文根据7月26日出版的《新英格兰医学杂志》，肥胖不仅越来越多，而且它会像感冒一样, 在人与人之间传播。