AC/DC have postponed their US tour after singer Brian Johnson was warned by doctors that he was at risk of "total hearing loss". This is unsurprising, given the decades that the Australian band has been pumping out the hard rock decibels . But deafness isn't only a concern for rock musicians. In recent years it has become clear that anyone around music a lot has reason to be equally worried. When exposed to music, risk to hearing arises from a combination of how loud the sound is and how long you're exposed to it. If you visit a nightclub that is thumping out music on the dance floor at 100 dB, then after only 10-15 minutes the exposure is potentially damaging. In a quieter part of the club, but where the music is still loud enough that you have to shout at your friends, then you could be there for a couple of hours before having to worry about your hearing. Of course music frequently exceeds 80-85 dB, but what counts most in assessing the risk to hearing is the average exposure. Exposure to high noise levels often causes temporary deafness - something many people have experienced after going to a nightclub. While hearing usually recovers after a few hours or days, repeated loud exposure leads to permanent hearing damage. Initially, this damage is subtle and unlikely to be noticed by the listener. Problems only becomes significant in middle age when the noise-induced hearing loss combines with the natural loss of hearing due to ageing. Improved technology means that the number of musicians having to give up performing could decrease, but student musicians need to be educated about the dangers of noise-caused hearing loss. The increasing use of headphones will also work against this - for musicians and everyone else. Unless people are careful with the volume level on their portable music players, hearing loss caused by music will increase. (http://theconversation.com/highway-to-hearing-hell-musicians-and-the-danger-of-deafness-55983) People who go to nightclubs frequently tend to _ . A) suffer from temporary headache. B) have their hearing damaged forever. C) experience natural hearing loss earlier. D) have a clear sense of their hearing damage.
B
"Ceci, wake up. It's an earthquake!" That's what Cecilia Wallace heard her mother shouting on the early morning of February 27th. Cecilia is a 7th-grader. She, her parents and her brother, Sam, were in Chile's capital city, Santiago, the day a big earthquake hit Chile. And like just about everyone else, they were shaken out of their sleep. "It was so frightening," Sam wrote. "The shaking was so huge that I will never go on a ride again." Cecilia and Sam wrote about their earthquake experiences. Their reports were later posted on the website. Cecilia, Sam and their parents were staying in an apartment on the 15th floor of a building. They were lucky. Their building stayed standing, because it was built to withstand earthquakes. Not everyone was as lucky as the Wallace family. More than 800 people died. Many older buildings fell down during the earthquake. The damage in Santiago wasn't as bad as in other parts of Chile. So the supermarkets were open for business on the morning of the quake. But it wasn't business as usual. "The supermarkets have been crazy with people rushing to buy their food for the next while," Sam wrote. Not everyone was able to get money to buy food that morning. So Cecilia and Sam made food bags to _ to people who were begging outside the supermarket. "We gave some to a kid of my age. I made sure he got cookies and bread." Sam and Cecilia's mother wrote that the kids also collected money for the Red Cross. It's certainly an experience Cecilia, Sam and their parents will never forget. Thankfully, they lived to tell their stories. From the text we can see Cecilia is a _ girl. A) humorous B) kind-hearted C) brave D) selfish
B
Q: Two years ago, Wendy Hasnip, 47, experienced a brain injury that left her speechless for two weeks. When she finally recovered, she found herself talking with what seemed to be a French accent: "I phoned a friend the other day, and she spent the first ten minutes laughing," Hasnip said at the time. "While I have nothing against the French." Hasnip suffered from foreign accent syndrome , a rare condition in which people find themselves speaking their own language Like someone from a foreign country. The condition usually occurs in people who have experienced a head injury or a stroke a sudden loss of consciousness, sensation, or movement caused by a blocked or broken blood vessel in the brain. The condition was first identified during the Second World War in a Norwegian woman whose head was injured during an attack by the German military. The woman recovered but was left with a German-sounding accent, to the horror of fellow villagers who avoided her after that. Researchers have discovered that the combined effect of the damage to several parts of the brain makes victims lengthen certain syllables, mispronounce sounds, and change,the normal pitch of their voice. Those changes in speech add up to what sounds like a foreign accent. Another researcher, a phonetician ,says victims of the syndrome don't acquire a true foreign accent. Their strangely changed speech only resembles the foreign: accent with which it has a few sounds in common. When an English woman named Annie recently developed foreign accent syndrome after a stroke, she spoke with what seemed to be a Scottish accent. However, Annie's Scottish coworkers said she didn't sound at all like a Scot. If a person suffers foreign accent syndrome _ . A) his coworkers will be afraid of him and avoid contacting with him B) he has more chance of suffering stroke again C) he will speak a fluent foreign language like native speakers' D) his speech only has a few sounds in common with the foreign accent
A: D
(Question)
BEIJING - A research team led by Chinese scientists have discovered dietary modulation of gut microbiota can alleviate both genetic and simple obesity in children. The findings of the team, led by Zhao Liping with Shanghai Jiaotong University, Yin Aihua with the Guangdong province children's hospital, and Tang Huiru with Chinese Academy of Sciences, have been published on EBioMedicine, a renowned medical journal co-sponsored by Cell and The Lancet in July. The team identified bacterial genomes specifically for producing obesity-related metabolites , and said an improved gut microbiota can significantly help to treat genetic obesity such as Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS). Beginning in childhood, PWS affected kids develop an insatiable appetite, leading to chronic overeating and obesity. The scientists used a diet therapy with beneficial gut bacteria on trial patients and found considerable _ appetite, weight loss and improved health conditions on the patients. The paper concluded dysbiosis of gut microbiota is highly related with both genetic and simple obesity in children, implicating dietary modulation of gut microbiota a potentially effective treatment method. Which of the following factors contributes to child obesity ? A) dietary modulation of gut microbiota B) beneficial gut bacteria C) an improved gut microbiota D) dysbiosis of gut microbiota
(Answer)
D