Đề thi thử tiếng Anh THPT Quốc gia 2023 (Mã đề 039)

Many people drink diet sodas as part of their diet. They believe these drinks are healthier than fizzy drinks. ___(34)___, according to a new study, "diet" versions of sugary drinks can be as bad for our heart as fizzy drinks that are loaded with sugar. The researchers ___(35)___ conducted the study said people should avoid diet sodas and other artificially sweetened beverages if they want to look after their health. Dr Guy Mintz, a heart specialist, said: "The belief that artificial sweeteners are a safe substitute for sugar is fake news. Artificial sweeteners have also been associated with weight gain, insulin ___(36)___, and diabetes."
Researchers looked at health data from over 100,000 people in France. Participants in the study recorded their diet, activity level, and health status every six months. The researchers said: "Higher intakes of ... artificially sweetened beverages were associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, suggesting that artificially sweetened beverages might not be a healthy ___(37)___ for sugary drinks. Also, water, water, and more water should be the beverage of choice. Given childhood obesity, ___(38)___ sweetened or artificially sweetened beverage should be a staple in children's diets."

The hours we spend scrolling through our smartphones appear to be changing the shape of our skulls. This may be the reason why some people — especially the younger crowd — are developing a weird, bony spike just above their necks. This spike, known as an external occipital protuberance, appears at the lower end of the skull, and is sometimes so large, you can feel it by pressing your fingers on the base of your skull.
A study published in the Journal of Anatomy found that the spike was becoming more frequent — especially among 18 to 30-year-olds. David Shahar, the Australian health scientists who conducted the research, believes the development was triggered by prolonged use of smartphones or tablets. As people tilt their head forward to look at the screen, they put pressure on where the neck muscles meet the skull, so the body then develops more bone layers to be able to withstand it, said Shahar.
In the study, Shahar and a colleague looked at the radiographs of 218 young patients, aged 18 to 30, to determine how many had these spikes. In all, 41% of the group had an enlarged spike and 10% had an especially large spike measuring at least 0.7 inches (20 mm), the doctors found. In general, enlarged spikes were more common in males than in females. The largest spike belonged to a man, sticking out at 1.4 inches (35.7 mm).
Shahar believes that the spikes will continue to grow in size as people keep hunching over their handheld devices, but adds that they should not be very harmful and rarely cause serious medical issues. “But if you are experiencing discomfort, maybe you should try improving your posture,” he said.

Although experts agree that traditional meetings are essential for making certain decisions and developing strategy, many employees view them as one of the most unnecessary parts of the workday. The result is not only hundreds of billions of wasted dollars, but the worsening of what psychologists call “meeting recovery syndrome”: time spent cooling off and regaining focus after a useless meeting.
It isn’t anything novel that workers feel fatigued after a meeting, but only in recent decades have scientists deemed the condition worthy of further investigation. Meeting recovery syndrome (MRS) is most easily understood as a slow replenishment of our limited mental resources. When an employee sits through an ineffective meeting their brain power is essentially being drained away, says Joseph A. Allen, a professor at the University of Utah. If they last too long, fail to engage employees or turn into lectures with little to no personal interactions, meetings will significantly diminish employees’ psychological stamina. Taking time to recover is a must, but doing so comes at the expense of productivity.
As humans, when we transition from one task to another – such as from sitting in a meeting to doing normal work – it takes an effortful cognitive switch. We must make a big mental effort to stop the previous task and then expend significant mental energy to move on to the other. Some can bounce back from horrible meetings rather quickly, while others carry their fatigue until the end of the workday. It’s even worse when a worker has several meetings that are separated by only 30 minutes.
While no counter-MRS measures have been tested, Allen says one trick that might work is for employees to identify things or locations that quickly change their mood from negative to positive. As simple as it sounds, finding a personal happy place, going there and then coming straight back to work might be the key to reducing recovery time. Another solution is to ask ourselves if our meetings are even necessary in the first place. If all that’s on the agenda is a quick catch-up, or some non-urgent information sharing, it may better for managers to send an e-mail to his or her subordinates instead. Most important, however, is for organisations to awaken to the concept of meetings being flexible, says Allen. We have to get rid of the acceptance of meetings as sites of pain, when they should be places of gain,” Allen says.