Do you know a promising sea biologist? The Junior Biologist series of programmes at the Aquarium will encourage a love of science in your seven to twelve-year-old child.

Each 2 hour class includes theme-related activities, a guided gallery tour, interaction with our animal care staff behind the scene, and a journal.

Sharks:

Sharks are amazing predators with remarkable adaptation. Separate the facts from the myths about this unbelievable animal. During this 2-hour programme your seven to twelve-year-old child will:

·Touch animals in touch pools in our private classroom

·Feed animals with our animal care staff

·Take a guided tour of the art gallery to observe local shark species

·Record observations in a journal

Other activities may include:

·Discover how sharks’ senses like smell work and how they help sharks to track down their prey

·Learn the key characteristics that make a shark a shark

·See how large different species of sharks can grow

·Explore your own sense of smell

The Aquarium reserves the right to change the animal interaction without notice due to animal safety, exhibit maintenance, or animal health reasons.

There are plenty of concerns about robots stealing jobs from hard-working, flesh-and-blood humans. However, Japan’s Henna “Strange” Hotel has fired half of its 243 robot staff, because these labor-saving machines were causing more problems than they were solving— and requiring humans to come in and fix things as a result.

One of the victims of the robot layoffs was a doll-shaped robot called Cheri, which functioned as an artificial intelligence assistant. Unfortunately. Cheri tuned out to be pretty poor at answering questions from hotel guests. A pair of dinosaur robots, which worked at the hotel check-in, were also made non-existent by the firings since they wound up being unable to do many of the jobs required of 8 receptionist. A concierge (服务台职员) robot, meanwhile, was replaced by a human better able to answer important questions about nearby tourist attractions. Humans are also now going to carry luggage to the rooms, one quarter of which the previous porter robots were only able to reach—and only in excellent weather conditions.

Not surprisingly, the hotel, recognized in 2016 as the world’s first robot-staffed hotel by Guinness World Records, allured curious visitors from all around the world. Encouraged by the success the hotel s owner, Sawada opened seven additional locations across Japan and announced plans to build at least 50 more.

In the end, though, it seems that—as great as robots can be—they’re simply not suitable for every role just yet. With the rise of robot bar-tenders, robot-staffed restaurants and the like, it will be interesting to see how many similar concepts fall apart in the coming years. After all, once the novelty of a dinosaur robot on reception wears off, you’re just faced with a receptionist who can’t properly understand you and lacks an effective number of fingers on each hand to properly photocopy your passport.

Ears are for hearing-everyone knows that Bur for a creature called the Cuvier’s beaked whale, hearing starts in the throat, a new study found.

The observation might help explain how all whales hear. The work might also help scientists understand how animals are affected by underwater sonar(声呐). This sonar, used by some ships, sends out sound waves to locate underwater objects.

The Cuvier’s beaked whale is a so-called toothed whale. Toothed whales dive deep into the ocean in search of food. As the whales hunt, they produce sounds that reach objects and then return to the whales. This allows the animals to “see” the shape, size, and location of objects, even when they’re 1,000 metres under the sea, where it is totally dark.

To better understand how the whale hears, researchers from San Diego State University in California took X-rays of two Cuvier’s beaked whales. The whales had died and washed up on the beach.

Ted Cranford and his colleagues used the images to make a computer model of a Cuvier’s beaked whale’s head. Then, they modelled the process of sound travelling through the head. The researchers knew that some sounds get to the cars of a toothed whale through a structure called “the window for sound”. Found on the lower jaw, this structure is very thin on the outside and bas a large pad(垫) of fat on the inside.

When the researchers used their computer model to work out how sound waves travel in the whale’s head, they were surprised to find that sounds coming from right in front of the whale actually travel under the animal’s jaw. From there, sound waves move through the throat, into a hole in the hack of the jaw, and finally to the pad of fat near the animal’s ears.