【英语时差8,16】睡觉=休息？（上）

It’s such a commonplace event that you probably never asked yourself why you sleep. But from a scientific point of view, this is far from a mundane¹ matter — in fact, for sleep researchers, it’s one of the biggest unanswered questions in the field. Stop and think about it for a second. Why should we sleep? Is it because we get tired? But we sleep every night, even when we have had plenty of rest. Furthermore, if you were designing an animal, would you have it lapse² into prolonged periods of unconsciousness every twenty-four hours? Shouldn’t that put it at a terrible disadvantage? There are no doubt several different answers to this question, but let’s just consider one overall purpose sleep may fulfill³: sleep as a survival strategy.

1 mundane   

adj.平凡的；尘世的；宇宙的

参考例句：

• I hope I can get an interesting job and not something mundane.我希望我可以得到的是一份有趣的工作，而不是一份平凡无奇的。
• I find it humorous sometimes that even the most mundane occurrences can have an impact on our awareness.我发现生活有时挺诙谐的，即使是最平凡的事情也能影响我们的感知。

2 lapse   

n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效

参考例句：

• The incident was being seen as a serious security lapse.这一事故被看作是一次严重的安全疏忽。
• I had a lapse of memory.我记错了。

3 fulfill   

vt.履行，实现，完成；满足，使满意

参考例句：

• If you make a promise you should fulfill it.如果你许诺了，你就要履行你的诺言。
• This company should be able to fulfill our requirements.这家公司应该能够满足我们的要求。