【推荐2】Do you consider redecorating your preschoolers room? What about a new paint job? Before you start painting the wall red, you might want to take a look at some research about the psychology of color from the Paint Quality Institute.

According to Debbie Zimmer, color expert at the Paint Quality Institute, “Color psychology can help you choose paint colors that create the right mood in a room affecting not just your own feelings, but those of everyone who enters the space.” Blue, which often ranks at the top of surveys exploring “favorite” colors, has been shown to slow pulse rate and lower body temperature. So blue is a terrific color choice for bedrooms, but less so for dining rooms, according to Zimmer.

Green, also one of the most popular colors, is a little more versatile (通用的). Zimmer says, “Because it’s calming, green paint is a good color choice for bedrooms, and since it’s the color of many appetizing (开胃的) fruits and vegetables, it can work in dining rooms, too.”

Zimmer says, “Red represents energy and excitement and is associated with desire and passion, so it’s a perfect paint color for dining rooms and adult bedrooms, but wrong for children’s rooms.” “However, pink is one of the most calming colors and is a fine choice for a baby’s room.” she says.

Orange is a happy color too and it has energy and warmth about it. However, it’s clearly not the color of calm, so it’s best not to use it when painting a place where you want to relax, according to Zimmer.

Anyway, the bottom line is to choose what makes you and your little one happy. “No one will spend more time in your home than you will,” says Zimmer, “so it’s important to paint with those colors that are personal favorites. Choose colors you love and you wont go wrong!”

【推荐3】Science not always so serious

Did you know that if you attach a weighted stick to the back of a chicken, it walks like a dinosaur?

No, you did not know (or care to know) such things, but now you do! Thanks to the winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes! The Ig Nobel Prize is the goofy younger cousin of the honoured Nobel Prize. It applauds achievements in the fields of medicine, biology, physics, economics, literature, etc. Every September at Harvard University, awards are presented in 10 categories that change year to year, depending on-according to the organization — what makes people “laugh, then think”.

The ceremony officially begins when audience members launch paper planes at an assigned human target on the stage. The new winners only have 60 seconds to make an acceptance speech. In previous years, the one-minute rule was imposed by a young girl-nicknamed Miss Sweetie Poo-who would go up to the platform and repeat the words “Please stop. I’m bored!” in a sharp tone until the speaker left the stage.

Fortunately for the new winners though, the Ig Informal Lectures are held afterwards on Saturday to give these winners more time to explain the crazy things they worked on.

The experiments can seem more like the brainchildren of teenage boys than of respectable adults. Justin Schmidt won the physiology and entomology Ig for creating the “Schmidt Sting Pain Index”, which rates the pain people feel after getting stung (蛰) by insects. Smith pressed bees against 25 different parts of his body until they stung him. Five stings a day for 38 days later, Smith concluded that the most painful sting locations were the nostril (鼻孔)and the upper lip. Ouch.

As silly as it sounds, not all of the Ig awards lack scientific applicability. A group of scientists from 12 different countries won in the medicine category for accurately diagnosing patients with appendicitis(阑尾炎)based on an unusual measurement: speed bumps (减速带). They found that patients are more likely to have appendicitis if they report pain during bumpy car rides.

All these weird experiments have just one thing in common. They’re improbable. It can be tempting to assume that “improbable” implies more than that-implies bad or good, worthless or valuable, trivial or important. Something improbable can be any of those, or none of them, or all of them, in different ways. And what you don’t expect can be a powerful force for not only entertaining science, but also for the boundary-pushing science we call innovation.

【推荐1】Events in Natural History Museum at South Kensington.

Dino Snores for Kids

16 August 2019, 18:45—22:00

This unique sleepover gives kids aged 7 to 11 the chance to explore the Museum after dark while taking part in fun and educational activities. At midnight, it’s time to settle down to sleep. In the morning, you’ll get to experience a live animal show before waving goodbye to the Museum when it opens to the public at 10:00. Adult:￡60. Child:￡60. Breakfast included.

Copycats at Lates

29 May 2019, 18:00— 22:00

Humans are exploring and copying nature’s solutions to meet the challenges of our modern world. Explore the Museum after hours and discover how cutting-edge research, technology and design are turning to nature to seek new ways of advancing society. Free entry, no ticket required.

Yoga Under a Whale

7 July 2019, 08:00— 09:15

Enjoy a yoga session inspired by the Museum’s connections with the natural world. Join us under Hintze Hall’s splendid blue whale skeleton for a cosy experience with movement and sound. After your class, enjoy special access to an exhibition or gallery before the Museum opens. Adult:￡35. Member gets a discount.

Crime Scene Live

8 June 2019, 18:30—22:30

A priceless stone has been stolen from the Natural History Museum and a killer is on the loose. It’s up to you to gather the evidence, analyze the facts and carry out experiments to bring the criminal to justice. Due to the nature of some of your detective duties we strongly recommend that you wear trousers and flat shoes. Adult:￡63. Ticket includes a free drink on arrival.

【推荐2】Over the past twenty years, the Mission: Impossible film series has always been connected with Tom Cruise. No matter what happens, he’s always been Ethan Hunt, the stubborn agent (特工) who always gives 110 percent to protect other people’s safety, regardless of his own.

Hunt serves as a kind of action hero, but there’s an interesting change in Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol (2011), the fourth movie of the series. In it, Hunt faces a great dilemma (困境), as he has to leave his beloved wife Julia behind to save the world. And this idea continues in Mission: Impossible- Fallout, where Hunt’s dilemma is even bigger than before, when he’s forced to make a choice between saving someone he loves or the entire world.

The theme of the “moral dilemma”, in which the hero must choose between two very difficult options, is common in cinema.

Characters like James Bond and Batman often face moral dilemmas of their own. Bond is loyal (忠诚的) to Britain and spares no effort to finish every task, but this often comes at the cost of following the rules. For most people, killing someone even for a good reason isn’t acceptable. However, Bond has only two choices in front of him: kill his enemies or be killed.

Differing from Bond, however, Batman never kills a single person in film The Dark Knight (2008). He refuses to break his own moral code (道德准则). Indeed, it seems Batman is a different kind of hero, one who puts his own morals above anything else.

As is mentioned on the poster for Fallout: “Some missions are not a choice”, which means that good intentions often come back to haunt (环绕) us. So, superheroes like Ethan Hunt and his Impossible Mission Force need to make the right choice by saving the world again. As the character Benjamin Parker, Spider-Man’s uncle in the movie series, wisely said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

【推荐3】A troop of a million walking robots could enable scientific exploration at a microscopic level.

Researchers have developed microscopic robots before, but they weren't able to move by themselves, says Marc Miskin at the University of Pennsylvania. That is partly because of a lack of micrometre-scale actuators（微米级致动器）---components required for movement, such as the bending of a robot's legs.

Miskin and his colleagues overcame this by developing a new type of actuator made of an extremely thin layer of platinum, a very valuable silvery-grey metal. Each robot uses four of these tiny actuators as legs, connected to solar cells on its back that can make the legs bend in response to laser light（激光）and push their square metallic bodies forwards.

“Each solar cell is connected to a specific leg and by shooting the solar cells with a laser, you make the legs move in the way you want,“ says Miskin. "It's really cool.”

Through a process similar to that used in creating circuit（电路）boards, Miskin and his team were able to mass-produce more than a million of the microrobots, each of which could only be seen under a microscope.

The robots are only able to walk around, but Miskin says they provide important evidence of concept, showing that it is possible to develop and mass-produce microrobots with on-board electronics. The next step will be to put additional functions together, he says. "We're developing things where we'll have sensing capabilities and well have programmability.”

He also wants to develop microrobot groups that work together. “There's all sorts of cool stuff that happens when you wind up with a lot of robots working together,“ he says.

In the future, these robots could let us explore the world at a microscopic scale. They could potentially be developed to wander inside the human body. "The hope is that these robots are really going to take us into the micro-world," says Miskin.

【推荐1】They may seem like ordinary people by day but in their spare time, these office, shop and school workers bring history to life. During the week they work in shops, offices, clinics and schools, but at weekends they transform into Vikings, Romans and Medieval peasants. The world of re-enactment (重演) is booming with more and more men and women taking up the hobby of travelling to bygone times.

Factory manager of a busy printers, Brett Freeman, 46, from Nottingham, changes into “Padmore,” a Victorian street-seller selling stationery (文具).

Already a veteran (老兵) of military re-enactments, Brett joined the “Ragged Victorians” when middle-age kicked in. “I was too old to portray a soldier but I wanted to get back into the hobby and the Ragged Victorians looked the best in terms of being genuine.”

At his first event, group members gave him “loaner gear” and a year to research his character. His teeth blackened with theatrical stain, in top hat and floppy coat, Brett looks every bit his Victorian image.

Seeking inspiration, Brett dipped into the works of Victorian journalist, Henry Mayhew, who wrote about the working people of London.

“My character is inspired by the description of a stationer in Mayhew’s London Labour and London Poor. I mixed that up with my own background in print, and local historical sources to create street stationer, Padmore, which is the name of my Victorian great-great grandfather.”

“Getting into kit (装备) helps immensely and once you are in the public area you try to remain in character wherever possible.” For extra authenticity, Brett combines his language with Victorian selling patter (顺口溜), replacing the word “envelope” with “hangflups.”

“Re-enacting is great fun, but we’re always glad of a hot shower and a comfortable bed at the end of the weekend,” says Brett. “Normal life can seem very dull after a particularly good weekend. It would be wonderful to go back in time for a visit, but studying the period as I have done, makes you realise just how hard life was for our ancestors.”

【推荐2】In modern society there is a great deal of argument about competition. Some value it highly, believing that it is responsible for social progress and prosperity（繁荣）. Others say that competition is bad; that it sets one person against another; that it leads to unfriendly relationship between people.

I have taught many children who held the belief that their self-worth relied on how well they performed at tennis and other skills. For them, playing well and winning are often life-and-death affairs. In their single-minded pursuit of success, the development of many other human qualities is sadly forgotten.

However, while some seem to be lost in the desire to succeed, others take an opposite attitude. In a culture which values only the winner and pays no attention to the ordinary players, they strongly blame competition. Among the most vocal are youngsters who have suffered under competitive pressures from their parents or society. Teaching these young people, I often observe in them a desire to fail. They seem to seek failure by not trying to win or achieve success. By not trying, they always have an excuse: “I may have lost, but it doesn’t matter because I really didn’t try.”What is not usually admitted by themselves is the belief that if they had really tried and lost, that would mean a lot. Such a loss would be a measure of their worth. Clearly, this belief is the same as that of the true competitors who try to prove themselves. Both are based on the mistaken belief that one’s self-respect relies on how well one performs in comparison with others. Both are afraid of not being valued. Only as this basic and often troublesome fear begins to dissolve（缓解）can we discover a new meaning in competition.

【推荐3】For many, traveling is a way to escape the worst parts of daily life. But what if a travel destination witnessed terrible events, like war, genocide（大屠杀）or nuclear fallout? Would you still want to visit?

There’s a growing phenomenon called “dark tourism” people visit sites associated with death and human suffering.

“It’s living on the edge almost -if you go to a place where people have really died,” Karel Werdler, a senior lecturer in history at InHolland University in the Netherlands, told CNN.

When people go to traditional tourist spots, like Disneyland, or some wonders of the world, they may feel happy to enjoy something interesting or new. Dark tourism, however, not only provides that novelty（新奇）but also can make them feel lucky that their problems are so small in comparison.

According to the Guardian, “Dark tourism to some extent relies on the reverse（颠倒）of the old equation（方程式）of more familiar tourism.”

For many people, these sites offer a way to reflect on the mistakes of the past and the lessons we can learn from history.

For example, Chernobyl, in the Ukraine, is one of the most popular dark destinations. When its nuclear reactor（核反应堆）exploded in 1984, it released a radioactive（放射性的）cloud so devastating that the surrounding area will remain uninhabitable（不适宜居住的）for 20,000 years.

Despite the destruction and danger of the still present radiation, nearly 72,000 people visited the area last year, reports the BBC. One of these was Li Yimeng, who went on a tour of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. During the tour she saw the homes of the power plant’s former workers, deserted classrooms, and an abandoned playground.

“I experienced a whole range of emotions as I saw the area where they used to live, which is now a wasteland,” she told China Daily. She also emphasized the need to show respect when visiting locations like Chernobyl.

Though dark tourism is related to death and dying, “it tells us more about life and the living”, The Sun noted.