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 givennight 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.

    Hidden from the noise of Washington, D.C., Hillwood Museum is a special treasure. It contains (包含) one of the finest personal collections (收藏) of Russian and French art in the world.

    Hillwood Museum was once the home of Marjorie Merriweather Post. She was a rich businesswoman. She owned one of the largest food companies in the United States. She was also very interested in collecting beautiful French art and furniture.

    She moved to Russia in the 1930s as her third husband, Joseph Davies, became the American ambassador (大使) in Moscow. Marjorie Merriweather Post had a love for Russian art as well. She bought the house in Washington in 1955 and she wanted to make it into a museum after her death. Many art experts helped Mrs. Post create its fine collection.

    Hillwood has many rooms which are filled with her treasures. Visitors can see beautiful music boxes from the eighteenth century and colorful paintings of European princesses (公主). Experts say the ancient wood and gold furniture from France is some of the finest ever made. Visitors can even look at Mrs. Post's jewels and clothes.

    The museum also has several beautiful gardens. One is designed like the gardens in Japan. It has a bridge and visitors can watch flowers floating in the water. Flowers are also grown all the year in a special glass building or greenhouse. These flowers are placed in the house throughout the year.

After a walk, visitors can rest at a nearby eating place. They can also buy objects to remember this special museum.

    Last week, Donna Strickland was awarded the 2018 Nobel prize for physics jointly with Arthur Ashkin and Gérard Mourou. It's the first time in 55 years that a woman has won this famous prize, but why has it taken so long? We look at five other pioneering female physicists — past and present — who actually deserve the prize.

    Jocelyn Bell Burnell

    Perhaps the most famous snub(冷落): then student Bell discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967, when she was a PhD student at Cambridge. The Nobel prize that recognised this landmark discovery in 1974, however, went to her male supervisor, Antony Hewish. Recently awarded a £2.3m Breakthrough Prize, which she gave away to help under-represented students, she joked to the Guardian: "I feel I've done very well out of not getting a Nobel prize."

    Lene Hau

    Hau is best known for leading the research team at Harvard University in 1999 that managed to slow a beam of light, before managing to stop it completely in 2001. Often topping Nobel prize prediction lists, could 2019 be Hau's year?

    Vera Rubin

    Rubin discovered dark matter in the 1980s, opening up a new field of astronomy. She died in 2016, without recognition from the committee.

    Chien-Shiung Wu

    Wu's "Wu experiment" helped disprove the "law of conservation of parity". Her experimental work was helpful but never honoured, and instead, her male colleagues won the 1957 Nobel prize for their theoretical work behind the study.

    Lise Meitner

    Meitner led groundbreaking work on the discovery of nuclear fission. However, the discovery was acknowledged by the 1944 Nobel prize for chemistry, which was won by her male co-lead, Otto Hahn.

    Of all the mountain gorillas that veterinarian Mike has treated in the past 18 years, a gorilla named Ijabo stands out the most. When Ijabo was three days old, an examination showed that one of his legs was badly damaged. Mike removed Ijabo's leg below the knee. Five years later, Mike says Ijabo is doing well. “I still see him every now and again,” Mike told TFK. “It's heartwarming.”

    Mike is a co-director of Gorilla Doctors. The organization provides medical care to ill and injured mountain and Grauer's gorillas. Its 16 veterinarians work in national parks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda. For years, the apes have fallen victim to habitat loss, poaching, and disease. According to their website, Gorilla Doctor's task is to save the apes “one gorilla at a time”.

    The doctors treat mostly gorillas that are accustomed to humans. Trackers, guides, and veterinarians check on habituated gorillas in the field several times each week. Sometimes, a gorilla has a medical problem that requires treatment.

    That calls for an intervention. A helper shoots the animal with a dart(飞镖). If the gorilla appears to have a serious but treatable illness, the dart contains antibiotics to fight off infection. If it appears to need surgery, the dart contains a drug that leaves the gorilla unconscious and unable to feel pain.

    Although the gorillas are critically endangered, there are signs of hope, thanks in part to Gorilla Doctors. The mountain gorilla is the only great-ape species whose population is growing.

    “Habituated mountain gorillas are increasing by 4% each year, which is as fast as the human population is growing globally,” Mike says. He notes a recent study that credits the work of Gorilla Doctors for 50% of that growth. He is proud of the role his team has played in making it happen.

    It was December 25, 1914, only 5 months into World War I. German, British, and French soldiers, already sick and tired of the senseless killing, disobeyed their superiors and started socializing with "the enemy" along two-thirds of the Western Front.

    German troops held up Christmas trees with signs, "Merry Christmas". Thousands of troops ran across the battlefields covered with dead bodies. They sang Christmas songs, exchanged photographs of loved ones back home, shared food and even played football. Soldiers hugged men they had been trying to kill a few short hours before. They agreed to warn each other if their officers forced them to fire their weapons, and to aim high.

    Fear ran through the military leaders on both sides. They felt that their power was being challenged: soldiers declaring their brotherhood with each other and refusing to fight. Generals declared this unexpected peacemaking illegal and said that participating soldiers would face a military court. Those found guilty would be imprisoned or even shot. By March 1915 the socializing movement had been destroyed and the killing machine was back in full operation. Over the next three years more than fifteen million people died in the war.

    Not many people have heard the story of the Christmas Truce (休战). On Christmas Day, 1988, a local radio host in Boston played "Christmas in the Trenches", a song about the Christmas Truce several times and was stunned by his listeners' response. Thousands of people called in, praising the song, with many moved to tears by the amazing events it described.

    You can probably guess why the callers were in tears. The Christmas Truce story goes against most of what we have been taught about people. It lets us see the world as it can be and says, "This really happened once." It shows us the potential we have as humans contradicts all of those TV and newspaper stories that tell us how mean and heartless people are. It is like hearing that our deepest wishes really are true: the world really can be different.

    Have you ever considered all the English expressions that include words about clothes? Let's have a look.

    People wear pants to cover the lower part of their bodies. We sometimes say that people who are nervous have ants (蚂蚁) in their pants. Sometimes, people may get caught with their pants down. They are found doing something they should not be doing. And, in every family, one person takes control. Sometimes a wife tells her husband what to do. Then we say she wears the pants in the family.

    Pants usually have pockets to hold things. Money that is likely to be spent quickly can burn a hole in your pocket. Sometimes you need a belt to hold up your pants. If you have less money than usual, you may have to tighten your belt.

    I always praise people who can save their money and not spend too much. I really take my hat off to them. Yet, when it comes to my own money, I spend it at the drop of a hat, which means I instantly spend it.

    Boots are a heavy or strong kind of shoes. People who are too big for their boots think they are more important than they really are. I dislike such people. My father is an important person. He runs a big company. He wears a suit and tie, and a shirt with sleeves (衣袖) that cover his arms. Some people who do not know him well think he is too serious and never shows his feelings openly. But I know that my father wears his heart on his sleeve.