Loneliness has been linked to depression and other health problems. Now, a study says it c

an also spread. A friend of a lonely person was 52% more likely to develop feelings of loneliness. And a friend of that friend was 25% more likely to do the same. Earlier findings showed that happiness, fatness and the ability to stop smoking can also grow like infections within social groups. The findings all come from a major health study in the American town of Framingham, Massachusetts.

The study began in 1948 to investigate the causes of heart disease. Since then, more tests have been added, including measures of loneliness and depression.

The new findings involved more than 5,000 people in the second generation of the Framingham Heart Study. The researchers examined friendship histories and reports of loneliness. The results established a pattern that spread as people reported fewer close friends.

For example, loneliness can affect relationships between next-door neighbors. The loneliness spreads as neighbors who were close friends now spend less time together. The study also found that loneliness spreads more easily among women than men.

Researchers from the University of Chicago, Harvard and the University of California, San Diego, did the study. The findings appeared last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The average person is said to experience feelings of loneliness about 48 days a year. The study found that having a lonely friend can add about 17 days. But every additional friend can decrease loneliness by about 5%, or two and a half days.

Lonely people become less and less trusting of others. This makes it more and more difficult for them to make friends—and more likely that society will reject them.

John Cacioppo at the University of Chicago led the study. He says it is important to recognize and deal with loneliness. He says people who have been pushed to the edges of society should receive help to repair their social networks.

The aim should be to aggressively create what he calls a "protective barrier" against loneliness. This barrier, he says, can keep the whole network from coming apart.

Besides loneliness, which of the following can also spread among people？

A．Friendship.

B．Happiness.

C．Depression.

D．Smoking.

Three passions have governed my life: the longing for love, the search into knowledge, and the unbearable __1__pity for the suffering of mankind.I have sought of love, first, because it brings ecstasy--ecstasy so great because I would often have __2__sacrificed all the rest of my life for a few hours for this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness which one shivering consciousness __3__looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, then, because in the __4__union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven where saints and poets __5__have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might

seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--i have found.

With equal passionate I have sought knowledge. I have wished __6__to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine...A little this, but not much, I have achieved. __7__Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible,led upward toward the heavens. But it always pity brought __8__me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors,helpless old people--a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty and pain make a mock of what __9__human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth of living, and would gladly live it again if the chance __10__were offered me.

ig cities. Just after the Second World War these big, twenty-to-thirty storey buildings, hundreds of feet in height, were thought to be the ideal solution to the housing problem. For on the one hand, there was severe housing shortage, but on the other hand, there was lack of space to build houses in urban areas. Blocks of "high-rise" flats seemed at first to be able to solve the problem, since they can offer more families to live in on less land. The beautiful, modem apartments in the high-rises were much sought after by people who lived downtown.

Hundreds of the vast blocks had been built before anyone began to doubt about whether they were good solutions or not. Are they suitable places for people, children especially, to live in？ A well-known British architect, who personally designed many of these buildings, now believes that the high-rises may well make those people who have been housed in them suffer a great deal.

Evidence has been collected by social workers, which suggests that people do suffer. They complain about severe loneliness and deep depression living within these great towers. People also talk about lack of communication with others, no easy access to a playground for children, no chances for adults to get familiarized with each other. Many people say that they have lived next door to each other for years in the same building, but they never know who their neighbors are. Some experts say that a large number of people living in the high-rises suffer from mental disorder and even developed criminal tendencies. As a result of these new discoveries, plans for new high-rise blocks are being reconsidered. We Chinese are now building up many high-rises in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Perhaps we should also reconsider the idea too.

There was a big housing problem after the Second World War ______.

A．in London

B．in the rural areas

C．in many big cities

D．in many countries

A.Experience has taught me many things. 经验（经历）教会我许多事

B.He cried with anger. 他带着愤怒而哭了

C.The loneliness comes to him. 孤独向他袭来

D.She has little patience with him. 她对他几乎没有了耐心

A.was

B.were

C.has

D.has been

A.is

B.was

C.has been

D.has

John Smith has been to the jungel to look for gorillas.()