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  3. The study by researchers at the University of Basel in Switzerland found that even in the absence of moonlight, participants sle

The study by researchers at the University of Basel in Switzerland found that even in the absence of moonlight, participants sle

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问题     The study by researchers at the University of Basel in Switzerland found that even in the absence of moonlight, participants slept less deeply and for shorter periods during the full moon than at other lunar phases. It is a phenomenon already known in other organisms as the "circalunar rhythm", but has never before been shown in humans.
    The brain pattern, eye movements and hormone secretion of volunteers were studied while they slept. Participants were also asked for subjective assessments of their sleep quality. The results, published in Current Biology , showed that around the full moon, subjects’ brain activity associated with deep sleep decreased by 30%. They took 5 minutes longer to fall asleep, had 20 minutes less sleep overall and lower levels of melatonin—a hormone known to regulate sleep. These findings correlated with the volunteers’ own perception that sleep quality was poorer during the full moon.
    Previous research has found no association between the phases of the moon and human physiology or behaviour. "I think one issue in the past was that they compared a lot of people by mixing different laboratories, different devices, and including data from patients, so the entire thing was not standardised," Cajochen said. "The advantage here is that we really had a standardised protocol. " The data was taken from a previous study that was not originally looking at the moon’ s influence. Participants were kept in a very controlled environment, with artificial lighting, regulated temperature and no way of checking the time. This ensured that internal body rhythms could be investigated independently of external influences.
    "The only disadvantage with such a standardised procedure is that we could only investigate 33 people," said Cajochen. "What I would like to do in the future is to increase the number of subjects and then to follow up each person through the entire moon cycle. " But such a study would have problems of its own, he added. "If you’re actually going to tell people you’re investigating the influence of the moon, then you may trigger some expectation or sensitivity in them. Sleep is also a psychological thing, of course. "
    If true, the mechanisms responsible for the phenomenon are unknown. Malcolm von Schantz, a molecular neurobiologist at Surrey University, said: "Essentially it could be either two things: the moon itself has a gravitational pull which somehow affects our physiology. I find that very unlikely as the gravitational pull of the moon is fairly weak. It doesn’t cause tides in lakes for example, only in large oceans. In fact, if you’re sitting within 15 inches of the wall right now then the wall has a stronger gravitational pull on you than the moon does. So I don’t think we have a sort of mini-tide in ourselves. "
    "The alternative is that there is a ’counter’, a mechanism which keeps track somehow of the phases of the moon. " Marine animals are already known to follow a circalunar rhythm and some believe it is tightly intertwined with the circadian rhythm—the other internal clock that many organisms, humans included, have which is entrained to the sun. Other researchers have wondered why a human circalunar clock should exist in the first place. Michael Hastings, a neuroscientist studying circadian rhythms at Cambridge University, said: "In evolutionary terms, it sounds plausible to me at least. " If you were a hunter gatherer, you’d want to be out there on a full moon, not a new moon. It might be that there’s something about suppression of sleep under those circumstances because you should be out hunting.
According to paragraph 3, which one of the following is not a characteristic of the very controlled research environment that participants were kept in?
选项 A、artificial lighting.
B、regulated temperature.
C、psychological intervene.
D、no way of checking the time.
答案C
解析 本题考查考生对第三段中有关本次研究的研究环境的特点的理解，第三段在讲到本次研究异于以往研究的优势在于“有一个标准化的流程”之后，第三段第四句讲到“参与者被安置在一个非常受控制的环境中，该环境使用人工照明、温度控制，参与者无法知道当前时间。”可见，[A][B][D]选项都是关于这个非常受控制的环境的特点，也是这个标准化的流程的特点。只有[C]不是它的特点之一，因此选[C]。如果题目换一种问法，“根据第三段，以下哪一项不是本次研究的标准化流程的特点之一”，答案也是一样的。
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