As I walked along the Edgware Road, I felt as though the world was closing in on me. All the sounds I take for granted, had gone. I had entered a world of silence. This unsettling experience occurred a few weeks ago when I agreed to go deaf for the day to support the work of the charity Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, for which I am an ambassador.

    When I managed to take a cab to the office of my manager, Gavin, I couldn't hear what the taxi driver was saying to me. Conversation was impossible. Then, when I reached the office, I had to ring the intercom five times as I couldn't hear a response.

    Everybody said I was shouting at them—I simply wasn't aware of how loudly I was speaking as I couldn't hear my own voice. Gavin kept telling me my phone was ringing, but I didn't realize. I was too busy trying to concentrate on reading his lips. And when he tried to tell me a code to put into my phone, I had to keep asking him to repeat it, more slowly. Eventually he lost his patience and snapped at me: “Just give me the phone!” I was shocked.

    People couldn't be bothered to repeat themselves, so they kept trying to do things for me that I was perfectly capable of doing myself. I felt I'd lost control.

    Being deaf for the day was extraordinarily tiring. I had to work so hard to “listen” with my eyes, get people's attention and use my other senses to make up for my lack of hearing. It was a huge, exhausting effort.

    Until that experience I didn't realize how much I took my own hearing for granted, or the sorts of emotions and experiences deaf people go through. If a deaf person asks you to repeat something, never think: “It doesn't matter.” It does matter.

    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.

    The fried foods, salty snacks and meat are major foods of the Western diet, which account for about 30 percent of heart attack risk across the world. Meanwhile, a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, the so called "Prudent" diet, can lower the risk of heart attack, according to a study.

    The research which looked at dietary habits in 52 countries, found people who ate a Western diet had a 35 percent greater risk of having a heart attack, compared to those who ate little or no fried foods and meat. Those who followed a "Prudent" diet had a 30 percent lower risk of heart attack, compared to those who eat little fruits and vegetables.

    The authors also looked at an "Oriental" diet, rich in tofu, soy and other sauces (酱类), and found it did not increase or decrease the risk of a heart attack.

    Previous studies have reached similar conclusions about the "Prudent" and Western diet in the United States and Europe, but did not include the Oriental pattern of eating. While some food of the Oriental diet may protect against heart trouble, the higher sodium (钠)content of sauces counter(抵消) that benefit.

    "This study indicates that the same relationships that are observed in Western countries exist in different regions of the world, "a professor of medicine at McMaster University said.

    Canadian researchers analyzed risk factors in food choices and the risk of heart attack in about 16, 000 people in 52 countries. Almost 6, 000 people had heart attacks, while the rest had no heart disease.

    Exercise is known to benefit people's mental health, but scientists recently discovered that too much exercise may have a negative effect on it.

    The researchers studied about 1.2 million people in the United States in 2013, 2015 and 2017. The participants, on average, experienced 3, 4 days of poor mental health each month. Those who did exercise experienced 1, 5 fewer days of poor mental health per month, compared to those who didn't exercise at all. The team found that people who exercised for 30 to 60 minutes three to five times a week had the best mental health, but those who exercised for more than three hours had worse mental health than those who didn't exercise at all.

    The scientists think that people who exercise so much may experience poorer mental health because that much exercise can be a sign of obsessive (强迫症患者) behaviors that have been associated with poor emotional and psychological outcomes. However, the only mental health disorder that the researchers looked at was depression.

    Among those who had been diagnosed with depression, people who did exercise experienced 3.75 fewer negative mental health days than those who did not, showing an ever greater difference, According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 7, 6 percent of people in the U.S. age 12 and over have depression. While all types of exercise appeared to help with mental health, cycling, gym-based exercise and team sports were the most beneficial.

    The team also looked at more specific factors, like education. People with a college education reported 17.8 percent fewer days of poor mental health than those without that level education Additionally, people in a healthy BMI (体重指数) range reported a 4 percent reduction in poor mental health days thin those whose BMIs were high. Even salary was a factor: compared to people with bower salaries, those with higher salaries experienced a 17 percent reduction in poor mental health days.

    The study showed that exercise can help with mental health, but that in some cases, limiting it may be necessary.

    Even plant can run a fever, especially when they're under attack by insects or disease. But unlike human, plants can have their temperature taken from 3,000 feet away straight up. A decade ago, adopting the infrared（红外线） scanning technology developed for military purposes and other satellites, physicist Stephen Paley came up with a quick way to take the temperature of crops to determine which ones are under stress. The goal was to let farmers precisely（精确的） target pesticide（杀虫剂） spraying rather than rain poison on a whole field, which always includes plants that don't have pest problems.

    Even better, Paley's Remote Scanning Services Company could detect crop problems before they became visible to the eye. Fixed on a plane flown at 3,000 feet at night, an infrared scanner measured the heat sent out by crops. The data were transformed into a color﹣coded map showing where plants were running "fevers". Farmers could then spot﹣spray, using 50 to 70 percent less pesticide that they otherwise would.

    The bad news is that Paley's company closed down in 1984, after only three years. Farmers resisted the new technology and long﹣term supporters were hard to find. But with the renewed concern about pesticides on produce and refinements（改进） in infrared scanning, Paley hopes to get back into operation. Agriculture experts have no doubt that the technology works. "This technique can be used on 75 percent of agricultural land in the United States," says George Oerther of Texas A&M, who recently retired from the Department of Agriculture, thinks remote infrared crop scanning could be adopted by the end of the decade. But only if Paley finds the financial support which he failed to obtain 10years ago.

    Many of us have had this experience: we lie down in a bed other than our own, perhaps at a friend's house or in a hotel room, and find it difficult or impossible to fall asleep. Is it because the bed is uncomfortable? Maybe, but perhaps there can be other reasons.

    According to a new study published in Current Biology, a significant reason is what the scientists call "first night effect". They believe that one side of the brain acts as a "night watch" to warn us about potential dangers. It forces us to stay awake on the first night in a new environment.

    For the study, 35 young volunteers were asked to sleep in a sleep lab for several days. Meanwhile, researchers watched their brain activities.

According to the researchers, on their first night, the left brains were more active than the right brains and people had a hard time sleeping. However, left-brain activity decreased as days went by, falling even to the point of complete calm. In this process, the participants got an increasingly better sleep experience.

    The findings suggest that the different rhythms of the sides of the brain affect our sleep. When the two sides work differently, the balance between them is broken. Thus, the brain can't relax and is sensitive to anything strange in the surroundings, just as it is in daytime.

    "At some level, the brain is continuing to analyze things, even though you are not aware of the analysis," US professor Jerome Siegel told Smithsonian Magazine. "If something unusual happens – if a door opens or you hear a key in a lock – you can be alert, even though the intensity of the stimulus is quite low."

    More surprisingly, this phenomenon is similar to the way some animals sleep. Whales, dolphins, and many birds can sleep with half of their brain while the other half stays awake, with its corresponding eye staying open.

    The researchers think that it is the result of evolution, and works to protect us in potentially dangerous environments.

    If you have ever had what you think is "first night effect", researchers suggest that you bring your own pillow or sleep in a room similar to your bedroom next time you sleep away from home.