F2F Class Notes (Nemo)
Vocabulary
contagious (adj): 1-A contagious disease can be caught by touching someone who has the disease or a piece of infected clothing: 2-A contagious feeling spreads quickly among people:
E.g.1: The infection is highly contagious, so don’t let anyone else use your towel.
E.g.2: Fear is contagious.
urge (n): 1-a strong wish, especially one that is difficult or impossible to control:
E.g.: She felt an overwhelming urge to tell someone about what had happened.
E.g.: I can never resist the urge to laugh.
dementia (n): 1-a medical condition that affects especially old people, causing the memory and other mental abilities to gradually become worse, and leading to confused behavior:
E.g.: The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease.
epilepsy (n): a condition of the brain that causes a person to become unconscious for short periods or to move in a violent and uncontrolled way:
E.g.: She can’t drive because she suffers from/has epilepsy.
side effect (n): 1-an unpleasant effect of a drug that happens in addition to the main effect: 2- an unexpected result of a situation:
E.g.1: Does this drug have any side effects?
E.g.2: A side effect of the new law is that fewer people will take out insurance.
Reading
http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1709/170903-yawning.html
Do you ever wonder why we yawn? Do you always yawn when you see other people yawn? A new study from Nottingham University in the UK has done research on this. Researchers found that yawning is contagious. It is a powerful and unstoppable reaction. People automatically want to yawn when they see other people yawning. The researchers said people actually yawn more when they try to stop yawning. The researchers also found that some people have a much stronger urge to yawn than other people. Lead researcher Professor Stephen Jackson said that even reading about yawning could be enough to make people yawn. You might even want to yawn right now.
The researchers studied the reactions and brain activity of 36 adult volunteers. The volunteers looked at video clips of other people yawning. They then had two choices – either to stop themselves yawning or to allow themselves to do it. The volunteers were videoed as they yawned or tried not to yawn. The researchers also monitored the brain activity of the volunteers and checked how strong their feeling to want to yawn was. Jackson said understanding more about yawning will help to treat conditions such as dementia, epilepsy and Tourettes. He said: “We are looking for potential non-drug, personalized treatments…that might be effective in [changing] imbalances in the brain.”
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