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

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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.
This text is mainly about __________.
选项 A.the health benefits of afternoon naps

B.the negative effects of sleep-deprivation on health and worker productivity

C.the importance of the siesta tradition in Spain and Latin America

D.the siesta tradition and its health benefits
答案D
解析主旨题。本题考查对全文中心思想的理解。文章内容不但涉及了午睡的种种好处，而且还讲述了有关午睡的历史和传统．因此能概括这两方面的内容只有D。A项只涉及了文章的一个细节“healthbenifits(对健康的好处)”，更重要的是afternoon nap的用词不准确，文章通篇讲的是“睡午觉”．行文中不断出现的关键词有snooze，siestas，midday break，mid-afternoon nap而非afternoon nap，故可排除。B、C两项分别对应文章第三、四段的内容。不能概括全文。
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