Every fall, like clockwork, Linda Krentz of Beaverton, Oregon,

felt her brain go on strike. “I just couldn’t get going in the morning,”

she says. “I’d get depressed and gain 10 pounds every winter and lose it 【M1】________

again in spring.” Then she read about seasonal affective disorder, a

form of depression that occurs in autumn and winter, and she saw

the light—literally. Every morning now she turns in a specially constructed 【M2】________

light box for half an hour and sit in front of it to trick her brain into 【M3】________

thinking it’s still enjoying those long summer days. It seems to work.

Krentz is not alone. Scientists estimate that 10 million Americans

suffer seasonal depression and 25 million more develop milder versions. 【M4】_________

But there’s never been definitive proof which treatment with very bright 【M5】_________

lights makes a difference. In all, it’s hard to do a double-blind test when 【M6】_________

the subjects can see for themselves whether or not the light is on. That’s

why nobody has ever separated the real effects of light therapy with 【M7】_________

placebo effects.

Until now, in three separate studies publishing last month, 【M8】_________

researchers report not only that light therapy works better than a

placebo and that treatment is usually more effective in the early morning 【M9】_________

than in the evening. In two of the groups, the placebo problem was

resolved by telling patients what they were comparing light boxes to a 【M10】________

new anti-depressant device that emits negatively charged ions. The third

used the timing of light therapy as the control. Why does light therapy

work? No one really knows. “Our research suggests it has something to

do with shifting the body’s internal clock,” says psychiatrist Dr. Lewey.

Broadly stated, your accent is the way you sound when you speak.

There are two different kinds of accents. One is “foreign” accent; this 【M1】_________

occurs when a person speaks one language using some of the rules or

sounds of another one. For example, if a person has trouble pronounce 【M2】_________

some of the sounds of a second language he’s learning, he may substitute

with similar sounds that occur in his first language for them. This sounds 【M3】_________

wrong, or “foreign”, to native speakers of the language.

The other kind of accent is simply the way a group of people speak

their native language. This is determined by where they live and what

social groups they belong. People who live in close contact grow to share 【M4】_________

a way of speaking, or accent, which will differentiate from the way 【M5】_________

other groups in other places speak. You may notice that someone has a

Texas accent—for example, particularly even if you’re not from Texas 【M6】_________

yourself. You notice it because it’s different from the way you speak. In

reality, everybody has an accent—in somebody else’s opinion!

People have trouble with sounds don’t exist in the language (or 【M7】_________

languages) that they first learned as a young child. We are born capable

of both producing and perceiving all of the sounds of all human

languages. In infant, a child begins to learn what sounds are important 【M8】_________

in his or her language, and to disregard the rest. By the time you’re one

year old, you will have learned to ignore most distinction among sounds 【M9】_________

that don’t matter in your own language. The older you get, the hard it 【M10】________

becomes to learn the sounds that are part of a different language.