A warm drink of milk before bed has long been the best choice for those wanting a good night's sleep. But now a study has found it really does help people nod off-if it is milked from a cow at night.

    Researchers have discovered that “night milk” contains more melatonin(褪黑激素), which has been proven to help people feel sleepy and reduce anxiety.

    The study, by researchers from Seoul, South Korea, involved mice being fed with dried milk powder made from cows milked both during the day and at night.

    Those given night milk, which contained 10 times the amount of melatonin, were less active and less anxious than those fed with the milk collected during daytime, according to the study published in The Journal of Medicinal Food.

    Night milk quickened the start of sleep and caused the mice to sleep longer.

    While the effect of cows milk harvested at different time has not been tested on humans up to now, taking melatonin drugs has been suggested to those who are struggling to fall asleep at night.

    Previous studies have also indicated that milk can be excellent for helping sleep because of the calcium content, which helps people to relax.

    Milk is also sugar-free and additive-free with nutritionists recommending skimmed milk as the best choice before bed as it is the least fattening. The more fat you take in before bedtime, the greater burden you will put on your body at night.

For some people, music is no fun at all. About four percent of the population is what scientists call "amusic." People who are amusic are born without the ability to recognize or reproduce musical notes (音调). Amusic people often cannot tell the difference between two songs. Amusics can only hear the difference between two notes if they are very far apart on the musical scale.

As a result, songs sound like noise to an amusic. Many amusics compare the sound of music to pieces of metal hitting each other. Life can be hard for amusics. Their inability to enjoy music set them apart from others. It can be difficult for other people to identify with their condition. In fact, most people cannot begin to grasp what it feels like to be amusic. Just going to a restaurant or a shopping mall can be uncomfortable or even painful. That is why many amusics intentionally stay away from places where there is music. However, this can result in withdrawal and social isolation. "I used to hate parties," says Margaret, a seventy-year-old woman who only recently discovered that she was amusic. By studying people like Margaret, scientists are finally learning how to identify this unusual condition.

Scientists say that the brains of amusics are different from the brains of people who can appreciate music. The difference is complex, and it doesn't involve defective hearing. Amusics can understand other nonmusical sounds well. They also have no problems understanding ordinary speech. Scientists compare amusics to people who just can't see certain colors.

Many amusics are happy when their condition is finally diagnosed (诊断). For years, Margaret felt embarrassed about her problem with music. Now she knows that she is not alone. There is a name for her condition. That makes it easier for her to explain. "When people invite me to a concert, I just say, ‘No thanks, I'm amusic,'" says Margaret. "I just wish I had learned to say that when I was seventeen and not seventy." (335 words)

    Friendships can be difficult-because often people aren't as honest and open as they should be. Sometimes, people end up getting hurt.

    Most problems with friendships come up because people are just too selfish to care about the things that their friends need. They care about their own needs much more, which makes it hard for friendships to work. However, being selfish is part of human nature. A person is put together in order to take care of himself and their own needs, not necessarily those needs of other people. Even though being selfish is something that all humans are born with, it is something that everyone should be against.

    The best thing to remember when you are a friend to anyone is that you need to treat your friends the same way as you'd like to be treated. This is wonderful advice for a friendship because it is really the only way to make sure that you are giving your friends everything you would want to be given in a friendship. Whenever you have a question about how you should treat a friend, it is easy to find an answer simply by asking yourself what you would like your friend to do for you, if he or she is in your shoes.

    Even if you're always thinking about how you'd like to be treated, and your friends are too, there are issuer(问题，忧虑) that come up from time to time in each friendship, and it is important to understand how to deal with these issues so that you can build stronger and healthier friendships. Issues like friends getting boyfriends or girlfriends and not spending enough time with their friends, or even friends finding new friends and leaving old friends behind are issues that will probably come up with one or more of your friendships. It is important to know how to deal with these issues so that you can keep your friends and make new ones. No one wants to have a broken friendship.

    Anyone who has ever played the game of Tetris (俄罗斯方块) knows the game's surreal ability to spill into real life. After you shut off the game, you still see those Tetris blocks falling in your mind. You're grocery shopping and find yourself thinking about rearranging items on grocery shelves. Your mind continues to play the game, even when you're physically not.

    Robert Stickgold, a Harvard professor, noticed something similar after a day hiking a mountain. That night, he dreamt he was still going through the motions of mountain hiking. Curious about this, he tried something: he got a group of college students of various skill levels to play Tetris and let them sleep in the Harvard sleep lab.

    Over 60% of the students, including those who suffered from amnesia (健忘症), reported dreams of images of Tetris pieces falling, rotating (旋转), and fitting together. Interestingly, half the Tetris expert students reported such Tetris dreams, while 75% of the beginners did.

    A study found that playing Tetris can grow your brain and make it more efficient. Adolescent girls played the game for an average of 1.5 hours a week over three months. The cerebral cortex (大脑皮层) of the girls grew thicker, while brain activity in other areas decreased. Richard Haier, who had found that there was a "Tetris learning effect", in which the brain consumed less energy as mastery of the game rose, concluded, "The brain is learning which areas not to use."

    Haier's study showed that as the girls practiced playing the game, nerve cells made connections, communicating through synapses (a synapse is a connection between two nerve cells). When you learn something, you change those connections. Every time you reactivate(激活) a circuit, synaptic efficiency increases, and connections become more durable and easier to reactivate. Stickgold says sleep plays a role in this memory process.

    So to sum up, whenever you do specific tasks over and over again, they take up less of your brain power over time. And that's pretty amazing.

    You are given many opportunities in life to choose to be a victim or a creator. When you choose to be a victim, the world is a cold and difficult place. “They” did things to you which caused all of your pain and suffering. “They” are wrong and bad, and life is terrible as long as “they” are around. Or you may blame yourself for all your problems, thus internalizing(内化) your victimization. The truth is, your life is likely to stay that way as long as you feel a need to blame yourself or others.

    Those who choose to be creators look at life quite differently. They know there are individuals who might like to control their lives, but they don't let this get in the way. They know they have their weaknesses, yet they don't blame themselves when they fail. Whatever happens, they have choice in the matter. They believe their dance with each sacred(神圣的) moment of life is a gift and that storms are a natural part of life which can bring the rain needed for emotional and spiritual growth.

    Victims and creators live in the same physical world and deal with many of the same physical realities, yet their experience of life is worlds apart. Victims relish (沉溺) in anger, guilt, and other emotions that cause others—and even themselves—to feel like victims, too. Creators consciously choose love, inspiration, and other qualities which inspire not only themselves, but all around them. Both victims and creators always have choice to determine the direction of their lives.

    In reality, all of us play the victim or the creator at various points in our lives. One person, on losing a job or a special relationship, may feel as if it is the end of the world and sink into terrible suffering for months, years, or even a lifetime. Another with the same experience may choose to first experience the grief, then accept the loss and soon move on to be a powerful creative force in his life. In every moment and every circumstance, you can choose to have a fuller, richer life by setting a clear intention to transform the victim within, and by inviting into your life the powerful creator that you are.

    We all need to eat. So, meals could be a chance to stop what we're doing and spend time with the people in our lives. A recent study from a team of South Korea suggests that eating together has many good effects on children and teenagers while frequently eating alone may lead to poor eating habits and poor food choices. People who eat alone more than twice a week have a greater risk of developing high blood pressure.

    There are benefits of family dinners on children and teenagers.

    In 2014, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) looked at data from nearly three-quarters of the world's countries. Among its findings is the fact that students who share a main meal with their families are less likely to hate school. Children who eat a main meal with their families are also less likely to take drugs (毒品).

    In the report, titled "The Importance of Family Dinners (VIII)," researchers say that teens who have frequent family dinners are more likely to say their parents know a lot about what's going on in their lives.

    Another study from the University of Montreal finds that children who eat with their families experience long-term physical and mental health benefits. These children are physically in better shape and drink fewer sugary soft drinks. These children also seem to have better social skills and are less violent.

    One of the researchers, Pagane, involved in this study is a professor at the university. She says that mealtimes with parents possibly provide young children with firsthand social events, which helps them have better communication skills.