Why do men die earlier than women? The latest research makes it known that the reason could be that men’s hearts go into rapid decline (衰退) when they reach middle age.

The largest study of the effects of ageing on the heart has found that women’s longevity may be linked to the fact that their hearts hardly lose their pumping power (供血动力) with age.

“We have found that the power of the male heart falls by 20-25 percent between 18 and 70 years of age,” said the head of the study, David Goldspink of Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. “Within the heart there are millions of cells (细胞) that enable it to beat. Between the age of 20 and 70, one-third of those cells die and are not replaced in men,” said Goldspink. “This is part of the ageing process (衰老过程).”

What surprises scientists is that the female heart sees very little loss of these cells. A healthy 70-year-old woman’s heart could perform almost as well as a 20-year-old one’s.

“This gender (性别) difference might just explain why women live longer than men,” said Goldspink.

They studied more than 250 healthy men and women between the ages of 18 and 80, concentrating on healthy persons to remove the confusing influence of disease.

The team will have to find why ageing takes a greater loss on the male heart, said Goldspink.

The good news is that men can improve the health of their heart with regular exercise. Goldspink stressed that women also need regular exercise to prevent their leg muscles becoming smaller and weaker as they age.

Music can relax the mind, energize the body, and even help people better manage pain. 【小题1】 Music therapy (疗法) is an intervention sometimes used to promote emotional health, help patients cope with stress, and boost psychological well-being.

【小题2】

Research suggests that background music improves mental performance. Playing more positive music leads to improvements in processing speed. So next time you are working on a task, turn on a little music in the background for a boost in your mental performance.

Music can help you eat less.

Music can be a helpful weight-loss tool. To lose weight, listen to soft music and dim the lights. According to one study, people eating at low-lit restaurants where soft music was played consumed less food. 【小题3】 where participants may consume their food more slowly and feel full sooner.

Music can help you sleep better

【小题4】 While there are many approaches to treating this problem, research has demonstrated that listening to relaxing classical music can be a safe, effective, and affordable therapy.

Music can help you manage pain

Research has shown that music can be very helpful in the management of pain. One study of fibromyalgia (纤维性肌痛) patients found that those who listened to music for one hour a day experienced a significant reduction in pain. 【小题5】

The secrets of dreaming are always interesting psychologists. It is generally acknowledged in the field that dreams people have during this time between childhood and full adulthood, that’s around 30, are the strongest and most influential. Yet not enough is known about the repeated patterns of dreaming. Researchers are still trying to answer a basic question: How does dreaming relate to the life experiences and developmental challenges?

G. William Domhoff and Adam Schneider, at the University of California, help to answer this question by examining the lengthy dream series of two individuals, “Izzy” and “Jasmine”. Izzy provided a collection of 4, 329 dream reports from between the ages of 12 and 25, while Jasmine provided 664 dreams recorded between the ages of 14 and 25.

Large collections of dreams like these pose challenges to researchers. Until recently, the means of studying dream series was to employ a team of recorders who take the time to code each dream for a predetermined(预先确定的)number of content categories, and then compare their results. Nowadays, digital technologies enable the analysis of language usage in dreams with high speed, accuracy, and objectivity. This marks a revolutionary advance in the science of dreaming. However, it can only lead so far.

To gain more specific and detailed insights, Domhoff and Schneider tailored word strings(词串)for each dreamer, mixing elements of traditional research with digital tools for analyzing large data sets. For Izzy these word strings included “family and relatives”, “celebrities” and “fantasy”, while the word strings they created for Jasmine included “familiar places,” electrical equipment” and “music”. The researchers used these word strings to identify connections between their dreams and real lives. Surprisingly, the results of the analysis revealed a great deal of consistency(一致性)and continuity in both sets of dreams. Izzy pays much attention to pop culture, and has affection for famous actors. Jasmine is an accomplished musician and performer.

“The frequencies of dream elements show the intensity(强度)of the dreamer’s personal concern with that element in waking thought,” Domhoff and Schneider conclude. For anyone who still claims dreaming is merely random nonsense from the brain and mental world, these findings are hard to explain away.