阅读理解
Few of us make money by losing sleep. But three graduate students at Brown University in
Providence built a company around sleep deprivation (睡眠不足).
Jason Donahue, Ben Rubin and Eric Shashoua were working late nights in Brown's business
and engineering schools. They began thinking about ways to sleep better. They discovered they
weren't alone in burning the midnight oil. Around 20% of Americans get less than six hours of rest
a night.
The friends imagined a smart alarm clock that could track how much time people spend in the
most restorative (有回复作用的) stages of the sleep cycle: REM (rapid eye movement) and deep
sleep. What would it cost to design such a thing? Five years of research, 20 employees, $14 million
and a whole lot of doubting from investors and scientists.
Their company, Zeo, based in Newton, Mass, launched its product in June, 2009. The Zeo device
uses a headband with tiny sensors (传感器) that scan your brain for signs of four sleep states- REM,
light, deep and waking sleep. The smart alarm clock displays a graph of your sleep pattern and wakes
you as you're not in REM sleep (which is when you're least groggy). In the morning you can upload the
data to the company's Web site, and so track your sleep over time. Most of the feedback comes in the
form of Zeo's ZQ score showing how well you've slept.
"Zeo allows people to unlock this black box of sleep," says Dave Dickinson, a health-care CEO.
Whether any of this actually improves sleep is up to the consumer, who will also need to make lifestyle
changes like cutting out alcohol before bedtime or caffeine after 3 pm.
For now the company is selling Zeo online only. Dickinson also plans to spread it to countries such as
Australia, where sleep deprivation approaches US levels.
1. Who will support Zeo?
A. People full of imagination.
B. People suffering sleeping problems.
C. People having access to the Internet.
D. People having bad lifestyles.
2. Why did the three graduate students imagine a smart alarm clock?
A. To wake them up on time in the morning.
B. To earn enough money for their study.
C. To improve the quality of people's sleep.
D. To enjoy their life while working at night.
3. To design the Zeo device, the three graduate students ____.
A. spent much time and money
B. were widely supported by scientists
C. worked by themselves all the time
D. attracted many investors
4. What can we know from the passage?
A. Zeo has a direct effect on users' lifestyles.
B. It needs more personal efforts to make Zeo function better.
C. A large quantity of Zeo devices have been sold in Australia.
D. Consumers can go to the Zeo company to purchase Zeo in person.
