Seventy years ago, a group of well-known people from the art world headed by an Austrian conductor decided to hold an international festival of music, dance and theater in Edinburgh. The idea was to reunite Europe after the Second World War.

    It quickly attracted famous names such as Alec Guinness, Richard Burton, Dame Margot Fonteyn and Marlene Dietrich as well as the big symphony orchestras (交响乐团). It became a fixed event every August and now attracts 400,000 people yearly.

    At the same time, the “Fringe” appeared as a challenge to the official festival. Eight theater groups turned up uninvited in 1947, in the belief that everyone should have the right to perform, and they did so in a public house disused for years.

    Soon, groups of students firstly from Edinburgh University, and later from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Durham and Birmingham were making the journey to the Scottish capital each summer to perform theater by little-known writers of plays in small church halls to the people of Edinburgh.

    Today the “Fringe”, once less recognized, has far outgrown the festival with around 1,500 performances of theater, music and dance on every one of the 21 days it lasts. And yet as early as 1959, with only 19 theater groups performing, some said it was getting too big.

    A paid administrator was first employed only in 1971, and today there are eight administrators working all year round and the number rises to 150 during August itself. In 2004 there were 200 places housing 1,695 shows by over 600 different groups from 50 different countries. More than 1.25 million tickets were sold.

    Biologists believe that love is fundamentally a biological rather than a cultural construct, because the capacity for love is found in all human cultures and similar behavior is found in some other animals. In humans the purpose of all the desire is to focus attention on the raising of offspring. Children demand an unusual amount of parenting, and two parents are better than one. Love is a signal that both partners are committed, and makes it more likely that this commitment will continue as long as necessary for children to reach independence. But what does science have to say about the notion of love at first sight?

    In recent years the ability to watch the brain in action has offered a wealth of insight into the mechanics of love. Researchers have shown that when a person falls in love, a dozen different part of brain work together to release chemicals that trigger feelings of euphoria, bonding and excitement. It has also been shown that the unconditional love between a mother and a child is associated with activity in different regions of the brain from those associated with pair-bonding love.

    Passionate love is rooted in the reward circuitry of the brain—the same area that is active when humans feel a rush from cocaine. In fact, the desire, motivations and withdrawals involved in love have a great deal in common with addiction. Its most intense forms tend to be associated with the early stages of a relationship, which then give way to a calmer attachment form of love one feels with a long term partner.

    What all this means is that one special person can become chemically rewarding to the brain of another. Love at first sight, then, is only possible if the mechanism for generating long-term attachment can be triggered quickly. There are signs that it can be. One line of evidence is that people are able to decide within a second how attractive they find another person. This decision appears to be related to facial attractiveness, although men may favor women with waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7, no matter what their overall weight is. (This ratio may indicate a woman's reproductive health.)

    Another piece of evidence comes from work by a psychologist at Ben-Gurion University, who found in a survey that a small percentage (11%) of people in long-term relationships said that they began with love at first sight. In other words, in some couples the initial favorable impressions of attractiveness triggered love which sustained a lengthy bond. It is also clear that some couples need to form their bonds over a longer period, and popular culture tells many tales of friends who become lovers.

    One might also assume that if a person is looking for a partner with traits that cannot be quantified instantly, such as compassion, intellect or a good sense of humor, then it would be hard to form a relationship on the basis of love at first sight. Those more concerned with visual appearances, though, might find this easier. So it appears that love at first sight exists, but is not a very common basis for long-term relationships.

    What do you do when you need to look something up? Go to the library? Open an encyclopedia(百科全书)? Click onto the Internet? These days, most people go straight to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. But how reliable is it?

    There's no denying the popularity and usefulness of Wikipedia. It attracts as many as 78 million visitors every month, and the site is available in more than 270 different languages. It's one of the most comprehensive resources available, which includes almost all details, facts and information that may be concerned. It's got much more information than an ordinary encyclopedia. The site is updated on a daily basis by thousands of people around the world. Anyone with an Internet connection can log on and edit the contents or add a new page. And you don't need any formal training.

Of course, there are some controls. Wikipedia has a team of more than 1,500 administrators who check for false information. And main targets for harmful comments(such as politicians) are off-limits to public editing. But with more than 16 million articles to keep an eye on, it isn't easy. So, while Wikipedia benefits from being constantly updated with information from all over the world, it's also open to “vandals”（恣意破坏公共财物者）.

    Some of the damage is easy to notice. One person drew devil horns and a moustache on Microsoft chairman Bill Gate's photo, while another edited Greek philosopher Plato's biography to say he was a “Hawaiian weather man who is widely believed to have been a student of 'Barney the purple Dinosaur'.

    But other things are harder to spot. The most common form of vandalism (恣意破坏公共财物罪)involves adding tiny items of false information into the biography of a famous person. Unbelievably, some of this misinformation has appeared in newspapers, with The Daily Mail, The Guardian and The Independent all having fallen victim to the dirty tricks. For example, in an article about British comedian Sir Norman Wisdom, one newspaper claimed that he co-wrote Dame Vera Lynn's wartime hit There'll be bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover. He did no such thing. And in other article, it was reported that TV Theme tune composer Ronnie Hazlehurst had written the S Club 7's hit Reach again, not true. So, if you're going to use any information from Wikipedia, make sure you double-check it first.

    Plants are living things. So can they feel pain? Plants don't feel pain the same way animals and people do, says Anke Steppuhn. She is a scientist at the Free University of Berlin in Germany. "What we define as pain usually has to do with a nervous system," Steppuhn explains. When you put your hand too close to a hot stove, nerve cells send a signal to your brain. Your brain decodes (解码) that signal as pain. This causes you to pull your hand away before any serious damage is done.

    Plants don't have nerves or brains, so they can't feel pain like we do. "But plants do recognize when something is hurting them," Steppuhn says. Because they are rooted to the ground, they can't escape a dangerous situation. So they need other ways of fighting back.

    The biggest threat to a plant's life is getting eaten. Some plants grow sharp little hairs. Other plants produce bad-tasting or even harmful chemicals. These force an attacker to abandon its meal. A plant called bittersweet nightshade does something even smarter, Steppuhn found. When a slug (蛞蝓) chews holes in a nightshade' s leaf, liquid begins dripping (滴) around the wound. It is almost as if the plant were bleeding. The liquid is sugary nectar (花蜜), and it happens to be a favorite food of ants. In their effort to collect the nectar, the ants swarm (蜂拥而至) all over the injured plant. They will attack anything that stands in their way. That includes the slug that damaged the plant in the first place. It's a very clever trick. Whenever a slug attacks a plant, the plant calls an army of ants to kill the slug.

    Nectar isn't the only way plants attract bodyguards. They also release certain chemicals into the air when they are being eaten. People usually can't detect these smells. But wasps (黄蜂) can. When a wasp detects this cry for help, it races to the scene of the crime. If it finds the right kind of insect chewing down on the plant, the wasp will interrupt the attacker's meal. It will do this by laying eggs inside the insect's body!

Some people today might be early risers because of DNA they take after Neanderthals tens of thousands of years ago, suggests new research.

When early humans migrated from Africa to Eurasia roughly 70, 000 years ago, some of them mated with Neanderthals, who had already adapted to the colder, darker climates of the north. The ripple(涟漪) effects of that inter mating still exist today：Modern humans of non-African ancestry(血统) have between 1 and 4 percent Neanderthal DNA. Some of that DNA relates to sleep more specifically, the internal body clock known as the circadian rhythm.

For the new study, researchers compared DNA from today's humans and DNA from Neanderthal fossils(化石) .In both groups, they found some of the same genetic variants involved with the circadian rhythm. And they found that modern humans who carry these variants also reported being early risers.

For Neanderthals, being "morning people" might not have been the real benefit of carrying these genes. Instead, scientists suggest, Neanderthals' DNA gave them faster, more flexible internal body clocks, which allowed them to adjust more easily to annual changes in daylight. This connection makes sense in the context of human history. When early humans moved north out of Africa, they would have experienced variable daylight hours—shorter days in the winter and longer days in the summer-for the first time. The Neanderthals' circadian rhythm genes likely helped early humans' offspring(后代) adapt to this new environment.

Notably, the findings do not prove that Neanderthal genes are responsible for the sleep habits of all early risers. Lots of different factors beyond genetics can contribute, including social and environmental influences. The study also only included DNA from a database called the U.K. Biobank-so the findings may not necessarily apply to all modern humans. Next, the research team hopes to study other genetic databases to see if the same link holds true for people of other ancestries. If the findings do apply more broadly, they may one day be useful for improving sleep in the modern world, where circadian rhythms are disturbed by night shifts and glowing smartphones.

Since ancient times, people have enjoyed themselves at the theatre. Here are two historical theatres, one in the East and one in the West.

The Deheyuan Grand Theatre, located in the Summer Palace in Beiing, was built in the Qing Dynasty. It is regarded as the place {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Peking Opera developed into its current form. The theatre has three floors — the Fu stage, the Lu stage and the Shou stage, symbolizing {#blank#}2{#/blank#} (happy), prosperity and longevity. The stages have special doors for actors {#blank#}3{#/blank#} (jump) out of the floor, and equipment to help them fly through the air. A well and five ponds under the Shou stage {#blank#}4{#/blank#} (use) in water scenes and also to increase sound effects. Today, visitors {#blank#}5{#/blank#} the Deheyuan theatre are still amazed by its structure {#blank#}6{#/blank#} beautiful paintings.

The first Globe Theatre was created by a group of actors, one of whom was William Shakespeare. It opened in London in 1599 and became {#blank#}7{#/blank#} huge success until it burnt down in a fire in 1613. {#blank#}8{#/blank#} (stand) by the River Thames, the Globe Theatre we see today has three main elements: a blue roof painted with stars, the stage itself and a {#blank#}9{#/blank#} (hide) door in the floor.

If you are a fan of William Shakespeare, you must come to the Globe to see a play. As Shakespeare {#blank#}10{#/blank#} (he) said, "All the world's a stage."