【经济学人】站着办公好处多

The virtues of uprightness

Standing is good for your mind as well as your body

It seems to promote cognitive performance

The virtues of uprightness这个短语其实有两个双关，virtue有两个常见的含义，一个是“美德”，另一个是“好处、优点”；uprightness也有两重意思：“正直”和“直立”；所以这个短语既可以理解为“正直的美德”也可以理解为“直立的好处”，本文中的意思是后者。
标题中as well as常常用于并列多个概念，这些概念可以表现为名词、代词、形容词、副词、介词短语，甚至谓语动词，as well as后面的一个概念通常是已知的或是作为衬托的，重点往往在前一个概念上。比如：He gave me clothes as well as food. 他给了我食物还给了衣服。所以本文的标题意思是：站立不仅对你的身体有好处，而且对你的头脑有益。
导语对标题中的good for your mind进一步进行解释，指出“站立似乎能够提升认知表现”，其中performance的搭配除了promote还可以用boost, improve

你只需要一张桌子

Oct 5th 2017

1. OFFICE desks at which you stand are all the rage. Abundant evidence suggests that sitting down for long periods is bad for health, and that working standing up is thus better for you. But is it better for the job? A piece of research just published in Psychological Science by Yaniv Mama of Ariel University, in Israel, and his colleagues, suggests it might be.

all the rage: When something is popular and fashionable, you can say that it is the rage or all the rage. 风靡一时；非常流行
e.g. The 1950s look is all the rage at the moment.目前，20世纪50年代的装扮正流行。
另： craze或fad可以指“一时的风尚;风靡一时之物”，比如：the latest fitness craze to sweep the country 最近风靡全国的健身热 以及Rap music proved to be more than just a passing fad. 事实证明，说唱音乐并不是昙花一现。

1. （能够让）你站在旁边（办公）的办公桌风靡一时。大量的证据表明, 长时间坐着对健康有害, 而站起来工作因此对你更有好处。但是对于工作本身来说（站着工作）更好吗？在以色列阿里埃勒大学的Yaniv Mama和他的同事们刚刚发表在《心理科学》上的一篇研究表明, 它可能是（更好）的。

解析：第一句指出现在流行能够站着办公的桌子，接下来说明原因：对健康有好处。然后通过设问提出新问题：对工作本身有好处吗？最后给出一项研究说这点可以被证实，引出下文的对此研究的具体介绍。
Abundant evidence suggests that sitting down for long periods is bad for health, and that working standing up is thus better for you. 这句中and后面的tha从句也是suggest的宾语，即Abundant evidence suggests that..., and that .... working standing up前面的working是动名词，后面的standing up是现在分词做修饰语（后置定语），修饰前面的working，所以可以理解为“站起来工作”

A piece of research just published in Psychological Science by Yaniv Mama of Ariel University, in Israel, and his colleagues, suggests it might be.这句中的主干是A piece of research suggests it might be；published in Psychological Science ...是修饰主语A piece of research的，可以理解为定语从句which is published in Psychological Science...的简化；后面的“, and his colleagues,”是和前面的Yaniv Mama并列，his即指的是这个人。
写作常用句型：Abundant evidence suggests that...可以用在各种写作的开头段来交代背景，是一个比较万能的句型。比如托福写作里有道题问：Should college students do part-time jobs? 开头时就可以写Abundant evidence suggests that doing part-time jobs is beneficial to the future of college students.
另注：Mama是这位男老师的姓氏，也是醉了……

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2. Standing takes more effort than sitting does, and might therefore be expected to require more mental attention. The muscles involved have to be monitored and fine-tuned constantly by the brain. Psychological experiments suggest that attention is a finite resource. Standing might thus be expected to reduce the amount of it available to be given elsewhere. A counter-hypothesis, though, is that standing creates mild stress—and experiments have also shown that, when people are under stress, their cognitive performance improves.

3. 站着比坐着更费力, 因此可能预计需要更多的精神注意力。（站立）所涉及的肌肉必须不断被大脑监控和微调。心理实验表明, 注意力是一种有限的资源。因此, 站立可能会减少能用在其他地方的注意力的量。然而, 一个相对立的假说是, 站立产生轻微的压力, 而且实验也表明, 当人们处于压力下时, 他们的认知表现会有所提高。

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3. To distinguish between the two, Dr Mama put some volunteers through what is known as the Stroop test while they were standing or sitting. The Stroop test requires participants (in this case 50 university students) to state the printed colour of words that are themselves the names of colours. In some cases, the meaning of the word and the colour in which it is printed are the same. In others, they are different (e.g. the word “blue” printed in yellow ink). Decades of experience have shown that it takes a volunteer longer to state the colour of the ink when it is different from the meaning of the word than it does when they are identical, and that the gap can be increased still further by imposing other mental demands at the same time.

3. 为了区分两者, Mama博士让一些志愿者在他们站着或坐着时做了著名的斯楚普测验。斯楚普测验要求参加者 (在本例中为50个大学生) 陈述单词上印的颜色，这些单词本身就是颜色的名称。在某些情况下, 词的意思和它的颜色是相同的。在其他时候, 它们是不同的 (例如, 印着黄色墨水的"蓝色" 这个词)。数十年的经验表明, 比起颜色和词义相同时，当颜色与词义不同时, 志愿者要花更长时间说出墨水的颜色, 而通过施加其他脑力上的要求这一差距有可能进一步增加。

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4. The upshot was that those who were standing when they took the test did significantly better at it than those who were sitting. The gap between the two scores of the standing volunteers was about 100 milliseconds. Between those sitting, it was about 120 milliseconds. The old army order of “stand to attention” thus seems literally, as well as figuratively, true. And office workers who choose to stand may be increasing their output as well as their well-being.

4. 最后结果是, 站着参加测试的人比坐着的人表现要好得多得多。站立的志愿者两种分数之间的差距大约是100毫秒。在那些坐着的人中间, 这个值是大约120毫秒。因此，军队里古老的“立正”（英文字面意是“站立注意”）命令似乎不仅在比喻义上而且就字面意思来说也是对的。而选择站着的办公室员工不仅会更健康而且会更高产。

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原文出处：经济学人

翻译：七呵夫

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