每日新闻播报（December 10）

>Drinks improve second tongue
小酌有助提高外语发音
Take a tipple and you could find yourself speaking a second tongue more naturally, according to a new research. The foreign language skills of participants in the study were found to be improved after a drink of alcohol, which suggests the way booze can put us at ease outweighs the negative effects on our brain – at least for the first drink, anyway. The study, involved 50 native German speakers recently studying Dutch at a Dutch university, who were either given a proper amount of alcohol or water based on body size. Their audio recordings of the five minutes chatting with a researcher were then presented to and assessed by two native Dutch speakers who weren't told whether alcohol had been consumed or not. Those people who had been given the alcoholic drink were given better ratings by the observers, especially for their pronunciation. "One possible mechanism could be the anxiety-reducing effect of alcohol," said one of the researchers, Jessica Werthmann from Maastricht University in the Netherlands. "But more research is needed to test this."
一项新研究显示，一杯酒下肚，你会发现自己的外语会说得更自然。研究发现，饮酒后，研究参与者的外语能力有所提高，这表明酒精令人身心放松的效果超过其对大脑产生的负面影响——至少喝完第一杯酒以后是这样的。50名近期在荷兰某大学学习荷兰语的母语为德语的德国人参与了这项研究，研究人员根据体型给他们适量的酒或水。随后，他们与一名研究人员闲聊五分钟的录音交由两位母语是荷兰语的荷兰人评估，这两人并未被告知说话的人是否饮酒。观察者给喝过酒的人，尤其是这些人的发音打分更高。研究人员之一、荷兰马斯特里赫特大学的杰西卡•威尔斯曼称: "一种可能的机制是酒精的焦虑减轻效应。但我们需要做更多研究来证实这一点。"

>Fingerprints login fails
老人指纹或无法被识别
Millions of older people, manual laborers and cancer sufferers could be unable to use their fingerprints to log in to online bank accounts. Banks are investing millions of pounds in fingerprint technology to replace passwords and PINs. But banks may have to rethink these plans after warnings the technology could be fatally flawed. Delegates representing major banks at a London cyber security conference were told many older people's fingerprints are too faded for the machines to recognize. Fingerprints can "rub off" for bricklayers, stonemasons and other manual laborers. Some medical treatments, such as chemotherapy, can cause fingerprints to disappear - sometimes permanently.
数百万老年人、体力劳动者和癌症患者可能无法用他们的指纹登录网上银行账户。银行正为指纹技术投入数百万英镑，以使其取代密码和个人识别码。但因为有人警告，指纹技术或存在致命缺陷，银行可能不得不重新考虑这些计划。各大银行的代表在参加伦敦网络安全会议时被告知，许多老年人的指纹消褪严重，以至于机器无法识别。瓦匠、石匠以及其他体力劳动者的指纹可能"磨没了"。化疗等一些医疗方法能让指纹消失，有时甚至能使其永久消失。

>Town offers newcomers cash
意小镇为增人口'买居民'
The mayor of a picturesque Italian town has come up with a novel solution in tackling its dwindling population figure - by paying people to move there. Nicola Gatta wants to return Candela, a small medieval town in Puglia, to its former glories when there were more than 8,000 residents in its Nineties heyday. Today, however, thanks to a troubled economy, there are just 2,700 people remaining in the town. Therefore, the mayor is offering up to 2,000 euros in an attempt to entice people to move to the area and boost population. In order to qualify for the cash incentive, new residents must move to Candela where they rent a house and have a job with a salary of at least 7,500 euros per year. According to the mayor, six families from northern Italy have already settled in and another five have applied to move.
意大利一个风景如画的小镇的镇长为解决该镇人口日益减少的问题，提出了一个新颖的解决办法，即付钱请人们移居到这里。镇长尼古拉•加塔希望能重振小镇过去的辉煌，位于普列利亚区的坎德拉是一个中世纪小镇，在90年代鼎盛时期，居民曾多达8000余人。然而，因为经济不景气，如今小镇只有2700名居民。因此，镇长提供高达2000欧元(约合人民币16000元)的奖励，试图吸引人们搬到该地区并促进人口增长。为符合获得现金奖励的资格，新居民必须搬到坎德拉小镇租房，拥有年薪至少7500欧元(约合人民币59000元)的工作。镇长称，意大利北部的六个家庭已经搬来定居，另有五个家庭已申请移居。

>Lack of sleep is killing us
研究:睡得越少寿命越短
In an interview with the Guardian, Professor Matthew Walker, director of the Centre for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley, said that sleep deprivation affects "every aspect of our biology". Through his work, he's determined that people who don't get enough sleep tend to be less healthy and have lower energy levels than those who get the recommended amount of shut eye per night. After analyzing the results of 20 separate studies, he's found a strong correlation between how much people sleep and how long they live. In summary: The less you sleep, the shorter your life will be. In one study, for instance, adults age 45 and older that slept less than 6 hours each night were 200% more likely to have a heart attack or stroke during their lifetime compared to participants who got 7 or 8 hours. In other studies, sleeping less has been associated with an increased risk of weight gain, developing Alzheimers, and relapses in addition disorders. Lack of sleep also lowered participants' immune systems.
加州大学伯克利分校人类睡眠科学中心主任马修•沃克在接受《卫报》采访时说，睡眠不足会影响"我们生物学的各个方面"。沃克通过研究发现，与那些达到了建议睡眠时间量的人相比，睡眠不足的人往往健康状况欠佳，精力不足。他分析了20个独立的研究结果，发现人们的睡眠时间与寿命长短存在很强的关联。简而言之，睡眠越少，寿命越短。以其中一项研究结果为例，45岁及以上、每晚睡眠少于6小时的成年人一生中心脏病发作或者中风的几率是每晚睡7或8小时的受访者的2倍。在其它研究中，缺乏睡眠的人被认为患肥胖和阿尔茨海默症的风险增大，其他身体机能失调的旧病也更容易复发。缺乏睡眠还导致了受访者免疫力降低。

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