Dining in a completely dark room, unaware what's on your plate while sitting next to a complete stranger may not sound like an ideal restaurant experience but it's certainly an intriguing way to spend a rainy night in London.

    Dans le Noir, close to London's financial district, is a restaurant full of blind waiters and waitresses who become your eyes around the restaurant, whose original Paris branch opened in 2004.

    In the bar with the light, you choose whether you want the fish, meat or vegetable, but the dishes themselves remain a secret, as do the ingredients of the “surprise” cocktails. Bags, coats and devices(设备) that light up, including watches and mobile phones, are kept in the bar. Placing your hand on the shoulder of your guide, you are led to a table in a black dining room that sets up to 60 people. And it is dark.

    The waiters tell you when the food is being placed down in front of you, then the fun begins, trying to get food into your mouth, then identifying just what it is that's on your plate, and finally whether you have missed any of it.

    It's also a great chance to break social convention and eat using your fingers. Those same fingers are also the only way you can tell how much wine you're pouring into your glass.

    The happy atmosphere in the dining room also made the night memorable. You can't really avoid talking to the person next to you at the long tables and guessing what the dishes are certainly provides adequate fuel for the conversations.

    All will be revealed at the end of the meal when you are led back out into the lit bar. Not only do you finally get to see what you've just been eating but also who you've been talking to for the last 90 minutes.

    A medical study has shown that excess(过度的)coffee drinking could cause heart attacks in people who do not metabolize(使新陈代谢)caffeine fast enough.

    The study, published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association, says an enzyme(酶)that metabolizes caffeine in the liver works differently in some people, depending on the make­up of the gene(基因). People who have a slow version (版本)of the enzyme are at a greater risk(风险)of a heart attack when they drink more coffee. The risk had something to do with a person's age and how many cups of coffee he drinks.

    The team from the University of Toronto in Canada studied 4,024 people living in coffee­rich Costa Rica between 1994 and 2004, of whom half suffered non­fatal(非致命的)heart attacks. They found slightly more than half had the slow version of the gene, while the rest had the fast form.

    Two to three cups of coffee a day increased the possibilities of a heart attack by 36 percent for those with the slow­acting gene and four or more cups a day lifted it by 64 percent.

    But those under 50 who had the fast version of the gene had a lower risk of heart disease, even with four or more cups a day.

    Those with the fast­acting gene who drank two to three cups of coffee a day had 22 percent reduced possibilities of having a heart attack, but drinking four or more cups a day only lessened the risk by 1 percent. Scientists recommend limiting coffee consumption(消耗量)to within four cups a day.

    ⒈Part of northern California had become an inferno(火海) in the latest big fire. A nearby town, Paradise, was reduced to ash. Nearly 50 people are confirmed dead and over 200 missing. Six of the ten most destructive fires in California's history have occurred in the past decade. Last year was the most destructive year on record, until this year. Why is the Golden State so flammable?

    ⒉There are three reasons why California has been surrounded by flames. First, the climate is becoming warmer. This has led to snow melting earlier, drier landscapes and a longer season when fires are likely to occur.

    ⒊A second reason is that more people live in flammable places. Since the 1990s 60% of new homes in California, Washington and Oregon have been built in spaces next to nature. These areas, which environmentalists call the "wildland-urban interface", are at higher risk of wildfire.

    ⒋A third reason is that there is more fuel. Before western settlers arrived, fires used to happen often and naturally, which made less fuel available for future fires. For the past century fires have been controlled well. This has led to a build-up of dry brush, and makes the average wildfire much likelier to turn into a big one.

    ⒌Putting out the flame is the most immediate task for California, but not the last. Many survivors will want to rebuild their homes exactly where they were. Californians will also want to ensure that utility companies(公用事业公司) are acting and investing responsibly. Investigations into what caused the fire are still going on, but some reports suggest it may have begun with sparks (火花) from lines owned by an electricity company.

    Can you trust your very first childhood memories? Maybe not, a new study suggests.

    Past researches show that people's earliest memories typically form around 3 to 3. 5 years of age. But in a recent survey of more than 6,600 people, British scientists have found that 39 percent of participants claimed to have memories from age 2 or younger. These first memories are likely false, the researchers said. This was particularly the case for middle -aged and older adults.

    For the study, researchers asked participants to describe their first memory and the age at which it occurred. Participants were told they had to be sure the memory was the one that had happened. For example, it shouldn't be based on a photograph, a family story or any source other than direct experiences. Then the researchers examined the content, language and descriptive details of these earliest memories and worked out the likely reasons why people would claim to have memories from an age when memories cannot form.

    As many of these memories dated before the age of 2, this suggests they were not based on actual facts, but facts or knowledge about their babyhood or childhood from photographs or family stories. Often these false memories are fired by a part of an early experience, such as family relationships or feeling sad, the researchers explained.

    "We suggest that what a rememberer has in mind when recalling fictional early memories is …a mental representation consisting of remembered pieces of early experiences and some facts or knowledge about their own babyhood or childhood," study author Shania Kantar said in a journal news release, "Additionally, further details may be unconsciously inferred or added. Such memory-like mental representations come over time, to be collectively experienced when they come to mind, so for the individual, they quite simply are memories, which particularly point to babyhood."

    "Importantly, the person remembering them doesn't know this is fictional," study co-author Martin Conway said "In fact, when people are told that their memories are false they often don't believe it."

    Ask any new college graduate about his immediate goals, and it is likely that he will tell you he wants a job. But it turns out that today's students are not going to be satisfied with any job. According to the latest survey, making a difference through their work is essential (必要的) to young people's happiness.

    The survey found that 72 percent of graduating college seniors believe being able to have a positive social influence through their work is essential to their happiness. Making a difference is so important to them that 45 percent say they would take a 15-percent pay cut to work at an organization that has a social or environmental influence, and 58 percent say they would take a pay cut to work for an organization whose values are the same as their own.

    Besides this, the survey found that female students are far more likely to put social influence in first place than their male classmates, echoing the results of a former study showing that female maths and science majors are more likely to say they go into those fields to make a difference.

    One reason for the emphasis (强调) on improving the world probably has to do with the culture of colleges, which encourages students to connect their studies back to real-world problems. Students are used to discussing important social issues (问题) with their friends and professors, and doing something about them in class or through volunteer activities. Once students develop those habits, they don't shut them off when graduation rolls around.

Online activity can be riddled with cyberbullying (网络霸凌). To find out which app is the best to keep your kids safe online, we tested four apps over five weeks. ● Mobicip Premium

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Mobicip Premium's social media and screen time monitoring were all strong. We found its app blocking, website content monitoring, and location tracking capabilities to be powerful as well. ● Net Nanny

$90 per year (billed annually) for 20 managed devices at Net Nanny

The user interface (界面) of this app is family-friendly and visually engaging, featuring cartoons of parents and casual language. The web filtering, screen time allocation (分配), and app management functions are all capable. ● OurPact Premium+

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This app requires that we pair our child's device to our computer with a cable and download the OurPact Jr. app. The Screen Time capability is personalized to fit our child's schedule. ● Qustodio Premium Small

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The thoughtfully designed web interface makes Qustodio Premium Basic easy to operate. Its web filtering and game blocking features were powerful. This app is available for Android, Chromebook, iOS, Kindle, macOS and Windows, though not all features are supported across all platforms.