题目内容
The institution of marriage in the United States has steadily declined in strength over the past four decades, according to a report released last month by a panel of scholars and advocates. The US Marriage Index, the brainchild of David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, seeks to quantify the health of marriage in the United States in the same way economists use leading indicators to parse (解析) the state of the country’s economy. The index combined five statistics—the percentage of adults between the ages of 20 and 54 who are married, the percentage of adults who reported being "very happy" with their marriages, the percentage of first marriages intact, the percentage of births to married parents and the percentage of children living with their own married parents—to reach a composite score illustrating the state of America’s nuptial (婚姻的) unions. In 1970, that score totalled 76.2; by 2008 it had dropped to 60.3. Almost 90 percent of children were born to married parents in 1970; last year it was 60 percent. Of adults between ages 20 and 54,78.6 percent were married in 1970, compared with 57.2 percent in 2008. The portion of first marriages that remained intact dropped from 77.4 percent in 1970 to 61.2 percent last year. Blankenhorn says the index was born partly out of his frustration with the difficulty of talking publicly about the subject of marriage. "There’s a lot of genuine opinion out there that really marriage is something that we ought to leave to people’s private decision-making and it’s not society’s business to get into," he concedes. "You’re going into their bedroom. You’re going into their private lifestyle choices. You’re going into situations you can’t possibly understand." Blankenhorn takes issue with that stance largely because marriage has such a significant impact on children. He points to statistics showing that kids who grow up in homes where their parents are married to each other are, on average, less likely to live in poverty, to have emotional or behavioural problems, to engage in premature sexual activity, to use drugs or commit suicide. Blankenhorn’s hope is that the index, a collaborative effort by 15 academics, researchers and policy experts intended for release every other year, will become a bellwether (领头羊) signalling the direction marriage is headed in the United States. And that it will galvanise (激励) concern and support for the institution. Blankenhorn says increases in divorce and in out-of-wedlock childbirth are the two factors that contributed most to the decline in the health of marriage in the last half century. The index also includes 101 suggestions to strengthen marriage in America, written by Blankenhorn and collaborator Linda Malone-Coldn of Hampton University. Among them: creating community-based marriage mentoring (辅导) programmes, and encouraging government funding of marriage education. When did Blankenhorn get the idea of the Marriage Index
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It has already been established that those who siesta (午休) are less likely to die of heart disease. Now, Matthew Walker and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that they probably have better memory, too. An afternoon nap, Dr Walker has discovered, sets the brain up for learning. The role of sleep in consolidating memories that have already been created has been understood for some time. Dr Walker has been trying to extend this understanding by looking at sleep’s role in preparing the brain for the formation of memories in the first place. His team was interested in a specific type of memory—episodic memory, which relates to specific events, places and times. This contrasts with procedural memory, the skills required to perform some sort of mechanical task, such as driving. The theory the researchers wanted to test was that the ability to form new episodic memories deteriorates with accrued (自然增加) wakefulness, and that sleep thus restores the brain’s capacity for efficient learning. They asked a group of 39 people to take part in two learning sessions, one at noon and one at 6 p.m. On each occasion the participants tried to memorize and recall 100 combinations of pictures and names. After the first session they were assigned randomly to either a control-group, which remained awake, or a nap group, which had a 100-minute of monitored sleep. Those who remained awake throughout the day became worse at learning. Those who napped, by contrast, actually improved their capacity to learn, doing better in the evening than they had at noon. These findings support the theory that sleep is clearing the brain’s short-term memory and making way for new information. It is already well-known that fact-based memories are stored temporarily in an area called the hippocampus (海马体), a structure in the centre of the brain. But they do not stay there long. Instead, they are sent to the prefrontal cortex (前额皮质) for longer-term storage. Electroencephalograms, which measure electrical activity in the brain, have shown that this memory-refreshing capacity is related to a specific type of sleep called Stage 2 non-REM sleep. The ideal nap, then, follows a cycle of between 90-100 minutes. The first 30 minutes is a light sleep that helps improve motor performance. Then comes 30 minutes of stage 2 sleep, which refreshes the hippocampus. After this, between 60-90 minutes into the nap, comes rapid-eye-movement, or REM sleep, during which dreaming happens. This, research suggests, is the time when the brain makes connections between the new memories that have just been "downloaded" from the hippocampus and those that already exist—thus making new experiences relevant in a wider context. The benefits to memory of a nap, says Dr Walker, are so great that they can equal an entire night’s sleep. He warns, however, that napping must not be done too late in the day or it will interfere with night-time sleep. Moreover, not everyone awakens refreshed from a siesta. What does the passage mainly talk about
It has already been established that those who siesta (午休) are less likely to die of heart disease. Now, Matthew Walker and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that they probably have better memory, too. An afternoon nap, Dr Walker has discovered, sets the brain up for learning. The role of sleep in consolidating memories that have already been created has been understood for some time. Dr Walker has been trying to extend this understanding by looking at sleep’s role in preparing the brain for the formation of memories in the first place. His team was interested in a specific type of memory—episodic memory, which relates to specific events, places and times. This contrasts with procedural memory, the skills required to perform some sort of mechanical task, such as driving. The theory the researchers wanted to test was that the ability to form new episodic memories deteriorates with accrued (自然增加) wakefulness, and that sleep thus restores the brain’s capacity for efficient learning. They asked a group of 39 people to take part in two learning sessions, one at noon and one at 6 p.m. On each occasion the participants tried to memorize and recall 100 combinations of pictures and names. After the first session they were assigned randomly to either a control-group, which remained awake, or a nap group, which had a 100-minute of monitored sleep. Those who remained awake throughout the day became worse at learning. Those who napped, by contrast, actually improved their capacity to learn, doing better in the evening than they had at noon. These findings support the theory that sleep is clearing the brain’s short-term memory and making way for new information. It is already well-known that fact-based memories are stored temporarily in an area called the hippocampus (海马体), a structure in the centre of the brain. But they do not stay there long. Instead, they are sent to the prefrontal cortex (前额皮质) for longer-term storage. Electroencephalograms, which measure electrical activity in the brain, have shown that this memory-refreshing capacity is related to a specific type of sleep called Stage 2 non-REM sleep. The ideal nap, then, follows a cycle of between 90-100 minutes. The first 30 minutes is a light sleep that helps improve motor performance. Then comes 30 minutes of stage 2 sleep, which refreshes the hippocampus. After this, between 60-90 minutes into the nap, comes rapid-eye-movement, or REM sleep, during which dreaming happens. This, research suggests, is the time when the brain makes connections between the new memories that have just been "downloaded" from the hippocampus and those that already exist—thus making new experiences relevant in a wider context. The benefits to memory of a nap, says Dr Walker, are so great that they can equal an entire night’s sleep. He warns, however, that napping must not be done too late in the day or it will interfere with night-time sleep. Moreover, not everyone awakens refreshed from a siesta. A piece of information in the hippocampus becomes an enduring memory in the brain after ______.
It has already been established that those who siesta (午休) are less likely to die of heart disease. Now, Matthew Walker and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that they probably have better memory, too. An afternoon nap, Dr Walker has discovered, sets the brain up for learning. The role of sleep in consolidating memories that have already been created has been understood for some time. Dr Walker has been trying to extend this understanding by looking at sleep’s role in preparing the brain for the formation of memories in the first place. His team was interested in a specific type of memory—episodic memory, which relates to specific events, places and times. This contrasts with procedural memory, the skills required to perform some sort of mechanical task, such as driving. The theory the researchers wanted to test was that the ability to form new episodic memories deteriorates with accrued (自然增加) wakefulness, and that sleep thus restores the brain’s capacity for efficient learning. They asked a group of 39 people to take part in two learning sessions, one at noon and one at 6 p.m. On each occasion the participants tried to memorize and recall 100 combinations of pictures and names. After the first session they were assigned randomly to either a control-group, which remained awake, or a nap group, which had a 100-minute of monitored sleep. Those who remained awake throughout the day became worse at learning. Those who napped, by contrast, actually improved their capacity to learn, doing better in the evening than they had at noon. These findings support the theory that sleep is clearing the brain’s short-term memory and making way for new information. It is already well-known that fact-based memories are stored temporarily in an area called the hippocampus (海马体), a structure in the centre of the brain. But they do not stay there long. Instead, they are sent to the prefrontal cortex (前额皮质) for longer-term storage. Electroencephalograms, which measure electrical activity in the brain, have shown that this memory-refreshing capacity is related to a specific type of sleep called Stage 2 non-REM sleep. The ideal nap, then, follows a cycle of between 90-100 minutes. The first 30 minutes is a light sleep that helps improve motor performance. Then comes 30 minutes of stage 2 sleep, which refreshes the hippocampus. After this, between 60-90 minutes into the nap, comes rapid-eye-movement, or REM sleep, during which dreaming happens. This, research suggests, is the time when the brain makes connections between the new memories that have just been "downloaded" from the hippocampus and those that already exist—thus making new experiences relevant in a wider context. The benefits to memory of a nap, says Dr Walker, are so great that they can equal an entire night’s sleep. He warns, however, that napping must not be done too late in the day or it will interfere with night-time sleep. Moreover, not everyone awakens refreshed from a siesta. What is said about siesta in the end of the passage
It has already been established that those who siesta (午休) are less likely to die of heart disease. Now, Matthew Walker and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that they probably have better memory, too. An afternoon nap, Dr Walker has discovered, sets the brain up for learning. The role of sleep in consolidating memories that have already been created has been understood for some time. Dr Walker has been trying to extend this understanding by looking at sleep’s role in preparing the brain for the formation of memories in the first place. His team was interested in a specific type of memory—episodic memory, which relates to specific events, places and times. This contrasts with procedural memory, the skills required to perform some sort of mechanical task, such as driving. The theory the researchers wanted to test was that the ability to form new episodic memories deteriorates with accrued (自然增加) wakefulness, and that sleep thus restores the brain’s capacity for efficient learning. They asked a group of 39 people to take part in two learning sessions, one at noon and one at 6 p.m. On each occasion the participants tried to memorize and recall 100 combinations of pictures and names. After the first session they were assigned randomly to either a control-group, which remained awake, or a nap group, which had a 100-minute of monitored sleep. Those who remained awake throughout the day became worse at learning. Those who napped, by contrast, actually improved their capacity to learn, doing better in the evening than they had at noon. These findings support the theory that sleep is clearing the brain’s short-term memory and making way for new information. It is already well-known that fact-based memories are stored temporarily in an area called the hippocampus (海马体), a structure in the centre of the brain. But they do not stay there long. Instead, they are sent to the prefrontal cortex (前额皮质) for longer-term storage. Electroencephalograms, which measure electrical activity in the brain, have shown that this memory-refreshing capacity is related to a specific type of sleep called Stage 2 non-REM sleep. The ideal nap, then, follows a cycle of between 90-100 minutes. The first 30 minutes is a light sleep that helps improve motor performance. Then comes 30 minutes of stage 2 sleep, which refreshes the hippocampus. After this, between 60-90 minutes into the nap, comes rapid-eye-movement, or REM sleep, during which dreaming happens. This, research suggests, is the time when the brain makes connections between the new memories that have just been "downloaded" from the hippocampus and those that already exist—thus making new experiences relevant in a wider context. The benefits to memory of a nap, says Dr Walker, are so great that they can equal an entire night’s sleep. He warns, however, that napping must not be done too late in the day or it will interfere with night-time sleep. Moreover, not everyone awakens refreshed from a siesta. What is Matthew Walker’s finding about siesta
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