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.

Finding fish is going to get harder as climate change continues to heat the world’s oceans. A new study finds that warming seas over the past 80 years have reduced the sustainable catch of 124 species of fish and shellfish. Sustainable catch refers to the amount that can be harvested without doing long-term damage to the health of populations of some species.

Overfishing has made that decline worse, researchers say. Overfishing refers to catching so many fish that the size of the population falls. In some parts of the world, such as the heavily fished Sea of Japan, the decrease is as high as 35 percent. That’s a loss of more than one in every three fish.

Researchers examined changes in 235 populations of fish and shellfish between 1930 and 2010. Those fish populations spread far apart across 38 ocean regions. Temperature changes vary from one ocean site to another. But on average over that time, Earth’s sea-surface temperatures have risen by about half a degree Celsius.

On average, that warming has caused the sustainable catch to drop by 4.1 percent, the study found. About 8 percent of the fish and shellfish populations the team studied saw losses as a result of the ocean warming. However, about 4 percent of some populations increased. That’s because certain species have thrived in warmer waters. One example is a kind of black sea fish. It lives along the northeastern U.S. coast. As warming continues, these fish will reproduce faster until they reach their limit.

About 3.2 billion people worldwide rely on seafood as a source of food. That means it’s urgent for commercial fishing fleets and regulators to consider how climate change is affecting the health of all of those fish in the sea.

A couple of weeks ago, my grandfather was explaining his favorite expression, “Nothing is ever easy.” The following day, as I tried to complete my day’s work, I happened to notice a bumble-bee on the skylight (天窗). The skylight was particularly high up, but I thought removing the bee would take no more than five minutes. An hour later, the bee still remained. All that had changed was that the living room was a mess and that I was dizzy from looking up into the sunlight. I did not expect to waste an hour on an insect so tiny, but by doing so, I understood what my grandfather meant.

It is not only time that we tend to underestimate we don’t account for unexpected costs. We often imagine what can work in our favor, but we seldom think of all the negative things that could affect us. However, it is important to remember that your day or week or year might not go as planned, and that is completely normal. It is perfectly acceptable to feel challenged even at a task you thought was simple because that is part of life.

If you can accept that nothing will ever be easy, then 1ife might seem slightly more manageable. In middle school, I thought high school might be easier because I could choose the classes I wanted to take. In high school, I thought college might be easier because I could have a schedule best suited for myself. Yet each time, I was both wrong and disappointed. After accepting that school wouldn’t be easy, I found myself with a more positive attitude and improved results.

Of course, there should be preparations made to account for expenses or time. Doing so can only help you accomplish your goals in a better way. However, there is no need to beat ourselves up (过分自责)when something stands in our path. Maybe we cannot see a bee coming our way, but we can always give ourselves the extra time to catch it.

In ancient times, our ancestors relied on stars to guide them on a clear night. Today, we have navigational systems to help us find our way, with the latest being the Beidou Navigation Satellite System (BDS).

The BDS is entirely built by Chinese engineers. With the launch of the last satellite from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center on June 23, the global network of 59 satellites has been completed. On July 31, Beidou started providing full-scale global services. It's difficult to imagine the great impact those satellites, orbiting the Earth, have on our daily lives.

When you unlock one of Hellobike's bicycles, you are using the BDS. The popular bike-sharing company came out with two new bike models this year that are equipped with the positioning service.

"The intelligent lock on each bike receives Beidou satellite signals and sends positioning information to the data center, which will help collect big data on the bikes and estimate users' riding demands in advance according to the data,” Chu Yiqun, a manager of Hellobike told Xinhua News Agency. Users can also find shared bikes more accurately thanks to Beidou's global positioning accuracy of 2.34 meters.

However, the BDS doesn't just work one way. As the country's largest space-based system and one of four global navigation networks, along with the United States5 GPS, Russia's GLONASS and the European Union's Galileo, Beidou adopts a unique two-way communication system, including its ability to receive messages sent by people from areas with poor communication signals. Obviously, this exclusive function isn't designed for users to chat online. Instead, it plays a role when disasters occur and communications are blocked.

After the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, all ground-based communication facilities were interrupted. Though the first generation of Beidou could only send 120 characters in a single message at that time, communication between affected areas and rescue centers was successful. Now, Beidou's messaging capacity has been increased to 1,200 Chinese characters in a single message. It is widely used in disaster alarms, automatic identification and information release.

As Sun Jiadong, former chief designer of the BDS said: "The application of Beidou is only limited by imagination."