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Passage 2 For centuries in Spain and Latin America, heading home for lunch a...

admin2020-12-24  93
问题 Passage 2
For centuries in Spain and Latin America, heading home for lunch and a snooze with the familywas some thing like a national right, but with global capitalism standardizing work hours, this idyllichabit is fast becoming an endangered pleasure. Ironically, all this is happening just as researchers arebeginning to note the health benefits of the afternoon nap.
According to a nationwide survey, less than 25 percent of Spaniards still enjoy siestas. And likeSpain, much of Latin America has adopted Americanized work schedules, too, with shortened lunchtimes and more rigid work hours. Last year the Mexican government passed a law limiting lunchbreaks to one hour and requiring its employees to work their eight-hour shift between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m.
Before the mandate, workers would break up the shift--going home midday for a long break withthe family and returning to work until about 9 or 10 p.m. The idea of siesta is changing in Greece,Italy and Portugal, too, as they rush to join their more "industrious" counterparts in the globalmarket.
Most Americans I know covet sleep, but the idea of taking a nap mid-afternoon equates withlaziness, un employment and general sneakiness. Yet according to a National Sleep Survey poll,65percent of adults do not get enough sleep. Numerous scientific studies document the benefits of naptaking, including one 1997 study on the deleterious effects of sleep deprivation in the journal Inter-nal Medicine. The researchers found that fatigue harms not only marital and social relations butworker productivity.
According to Mark Rosekind, a former NASA scientist and founder of Solutions in Cupertino,Calif., which educates businesses about the advantages of sanctioning naps, we′ re biologically pro-grammed to get sleepy between 3 and 5 p.m. and 3 and 5 a.m. Our internal timekeeper--called thecircadian clock--operates on a 24-hour rotation and every 12 hours there′s a dip. In accordancewith these natural sleep rhythms, Rosekind recommends that naps be either for 40 minutes or for twohours. Latin American countries, asserts Rosekind, have had it right all along. They′ ve been in syncwith their clocks; we haven′t.
Since most of the world is sleep-deprived, getting well under the recommended eight hours anight (adults get an average of 6.5 hours nightly), we usually operate on a kind of idle midday. Napsare even more useful now that most of us forfeit sleep because of insane work schedules, longercommute times and stress, In a study published last April, Brazilian medical researchers noted thatblood pressure and arterial blood pressure dropped during a siesta.
The word "covet" in Paragraph 3 most likely means __________.
选项 A.need

B.desire

C.lack

D.value
答案B
解析词义题。covet出现在第三段第一句：我认识的大多数美国人都covet睡眠．但是睡午觉的想法就等同于懒惰、失业及总要偷偷摸摸。连词but的使用表明后面的内容与前文是意义上的转折。由此可知，大多数美国人都渴望睡眠，只是人们普遍对午睡有偏见。故B项正确。其他选项代入原文后前后意义不符．故可排除。
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