Chocolate is Good for Your Brain.

Sure, chocolate is a delicious treat, and it’s one of our favorite desserts. But it’s not exactly a health food, so we should not take too much of it ~ right? Well, it turns out that 【小题1】 (eat) chocolate might actually have a pretty significant health benefit. According to recent research 【小题2】 (conduct) by five scientists in Italy, compounds found in chocolate, which 【小题3】 (call) flavanols (黄烷醇), can help boost cognitive (认知的) performance. Yes, chocolate’s good for your brain. The scientists, studying at the Universities of Rome and L’Aquila, 【小题4】 (record) research from 10 different studies. The studies assessed people’s performance before and after eating cocoa or chocolate. The results were telling: in 9 out of the 10 studies, there was a noticeable improvement after the subjects 【小题5】 (eat) the chocolate. The scientists found improvements in “general cognition, attention, processing speed, and working memory.” And there’s even more good news. 【小题6】 (take) daily over periods ranging from five days to three months, chocolate can produce noticeable long-term improvements in cognition. Older adults, with their memories 【小题7】 (decline), saw an especially significant improvement.

All chocolate has flavanols, since they 【小题8】 (occur) naturally in cocoa. However, dark chocolate lovers, are happier, because it has more flavanols than any other type of chocolate. In fact, the scientists themselves 【小题9】 (claim) that, after doing this research, they’ve started eating dark chocolate every day! Here are some other health benefits of eating dark chocolate. Now, we’re not saying that you must start eating chocolate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner -- it’s still high in sugar and low in nutrients. But next time you find yourself 【小题10】 (yawn) after a sleepless night, snack on some chocolate and let the flavanols work their magic. Go ahead, and take advantage of chocolate’s new-found brainpower with these delicious recipes.

Senior citizens are the first to come to our mind when we think of hearing loss, but in a recent report, hearing professionals worry teenagers will soon outnumber aging adults when it comes to living with hearing loss.

In recent years, the rise in popularity of personal audio devices from iPods to smart phones 【小题1】(have) dangerous effect on the ears of those who use them most, teenagers! A research conducted by the World Health Organization finds nearly 50% of teens have fallen into the habit of exposing themselves to unsafe levels of sound so far and 【小题2】 they have been faced with hearing loss.

A sound 【小题3】is considered unsafe goes beyond 85 decibels (分贝). At that level, it takes just 8 hours of listening over your lifetime to cause damage. The louder the sound is, the 【小题4】 (little) time it takes to cause damage. Because hearing loss is 【小题5】 (typical) considered a health problem for the elderly, it is difficult to convince already stubborn teenagers that they really are doing damage 【小题6】 their ears.

Young adults 【小题7】 (expose) to loud noise over a period of time may have some hearing loss symptoms. Their 【小题8】 (able) to learn is compromised, and they may have difficulty developing social skills.

In an effort to help teens better protect their hearing, we suggest 【小题9】 (set) volume limits on personal audio devices. Also, 【小题10】 is no doubt that it is good to reduce the exposure to noise and to take listening breaks to give the ears a rest.

There are plenty of benefits to having an older brother. However, a new study finds an interesting disadvantage: with an older brother【小题1】 (come) the poor language development of his younger siblings (兄弟姐妹).

The study is based upon some research which shows that having older siblings【小题2】 (link) with poor language development. Now researchers have reached a more specific conclusion: only children with an older brother exhibit these language【小题3】 (difficult).

Researchers studied more than 1,000 children from birth to the age of five-and-a-half years old. Each child's language skills were tested at ages 2, 3, and 5.5, using tests specially 【小题4】 (design) to measure numerous aspects of language development.【小题5】 they discovered was significant: compared with children having an older sister, those with an older brother had,【小题6】 average, a two-month delay in their language development.

As for explaining this phenomenon, researchers have put 【小题7】 two assumptions._ 【小题8】 is that older sisters tend to talk more often than older brothers; the other is that older sisters usually compete with their siblings【小题9】 (little) than older brothers for their parents' attention.

Today, the whole picture of this phenomenon still remains【小题10】 (explore).