Just imagine lying down on your bed in a hotel room with fishes quietly paying you a visit. Yes, we are talking about spending days and nights under water. As exciting as it sounds, we have found some of the world’s best underwater hotels for you.

ATLANTIS

   The hotel is located (位于) in Dubai. You can simply relax while seeing many kinds of marine(海洋的) animals in their natural habitat. Mother Nature here is just a curtain away. Atlantis also has a hotel on the Bahamas, which is as famous as this one in Dubai.

JULES UNDERSEA LODGE

   A very popular place among famous people, Jules is a place for visitors who are often looking for thrills in a vacation. Located on the Lodge off the coast of Key Largo, Florida, Jules requires its visitors to take a course in scuba diving(水肺潜泳) as the gate is 21 feet into the water. It is one of the oldest underwater hotels.

UTTER INN

   The hotel is artist Mikael Genberg’s baby. Utter Inn offers bedrooms that let the visitors sleep peacefully under the waters of Malaren. These rooms are quite comfortable and give the guests a one-to-one interaction(互动) with marine animals.

CONRAD MALDIVES RANGALI ISLAND RESORT

Now many people have a fear of water, which leads to their feeling of being anxious. If you are this kind of people, but still want to experience marine activities around you, then Maldives is the place for you. This is not exactly located underwater but yes, Conrad has a dining room underwater that offers some great food with marine activities happening around.

You know Australia is a big country, but you may not know how easy it is to get around. The untouched beaches that go for miles and deserts that touch the horizon are just there, waiting to be reached and explored. The following are the different ways you can explore our vast country.

Getting around Australia:

Air

  Flying is the best way to cover a long distance in a short time. Moreover, competition among airlines makes great flying fees available for you.

Drive

  Australia has a vast network of well-maintained roads and some of the most beautiful touring routes in the world. It’s easy for you to find car rental companies at major airports, central city locations, suburbs and attractions.

Bus

  Bus travel in Australia is comfortable, easy and economical. Buses generally have air conditioning, reading lights, adjustable seats and videos. Services are frequent, affordable and efficient.

Rail

  Train travel is the cheapest and gives you an insight into Australia’s size and variety. Scheduled services are a great way to get quickly between our cities and regional centers.

Ferry

  The Spirit of Tasmania runs a passenger and vehicle ferry service betweenMelbourneand Tasmania nightly. Extra services are running during summer rush hours. Ferries connect suburbs in our capital cities.

Walk

  With easy on the feet pedestrian streets, walking is a great way to get around our cities.

  Besides all the above, you can also experience some of the longest tracks and trails in the world in central Australia— impressive journeys of a thousand kilometers or more that can take several weeks to complete.

  Until recently, it was believed that laughter was unique to humans. However, recent research has found that some animals make laughter-like sounds in certain situations. For example, researchers have found that when chimpanzees play with each other, they get excited and make a special kind of panting sound. This panting sound is not like the “ha-ha-ha” made by humans when they laugh, but sounds more like grunting.

  Researchers have also found that laughter reduces stress levels in chimpanzees. It’s interesting to note that laughter has a similar effect on other chimpanzees as human laughter has on other people. Just as the sound of human laughter relieves stress in people, one researcher found that when chimpanzees hear recordings of other chimpanzees making the laughter sound, it makes them a lot happier and more playful. The truth is that most mammals(哺乳动物) appear to make a special sound when they are amused or happy.

  Certain kinds of parrots and mynah birds imitate human laughter with amazing precision(精确度). It was firstly thought that this type of laughter was plain mimicry(模仿) and didn’t show the birds were amused or excited about something. However, researchers found a particular mynah bird used human laughter to respond to different stimuli(刺激). When people he liked entered the room, he would greet them and laugh softly. On other occasions he would laugh out loud. Finally, and this was key, he would chuckle when he played a trick on a visitor or passerby.

  Perhaps the most surprising discovery about animal laughter involves rats. Researchers discovered that when rats play with each other, they make chirping sounds that are above the range of human hearing. It was also discovered that the area of a rat’s brain that lights up when it chirps is the same area of the human brain that lights up when a human is amused. So the rat’s chirping sound is clearly associated with positive emotional feelings.

  Some researchers guess that laughter may be a quality shared by all mammals. However, more research is needed before such a conclusion can be reached.

 Imagine walking through the park on a sunny day. You look up to see a spider twice the size of your head. It looks so real that it seems to be moving down its web toward you.

  Before you scream and run away, look closer. That 50-pound spider is a wood sculpture(雕塑), made by artist David Rogers. It is one of 14 bugs(虫子) David has on display in parks and gardens around the United States.

  David’s collection is called Big Bugs. It includes three monster ants. Each one is 25 feet long. That’s almost as long as a school bus! Some of David’s other bugs are all big enough to sit on.

  David hopes his huge sculptures will help us to stop and notice bugs. We may not see them working. Sometimes we may not even want them around. But David points out that bugs are an important part of nature. They make the soil a better place for plants to grow, they pollinate(对……授粉) flowers, they eat other insects, and they are food to many creatures.

  As a child, David did not get the best grades. He was not even the best painter. But he loved to make things. Using only sticks and string, he would build tiny villages small enough for an insect. One day when he was older, he saw a bent tree that reminded him of the backbone of an animal. He decided to form a giant beast by adding more branches. The result was a dinosaur named Goliath, his first large sculpture. David has also made sculptures by welding(焊接) metal. By joining together old car parts, he made a housefly and a dragonfly.

  Does this sound like fun to you? Good news—David believes there’s an artist in everyone. Of course, you probably won’t start out by making a 25-foot ant. It took David years to come up with his huge bugs. But as David says, “There is no right or wrong way to express yourself with art. Let your imagination run free.”

For the first time, researchers have discovered that some plants can kill insects in order to get additional nutrients. New research shows that they catch and kill small insects with their own sticky hairs near the roots and then absorb nutrients through their roots when the insects are killed and fall to the ground.

Professor Mark Chase, of Kew and Queen Mary, University of London, said: “The cultivated (改良的) tomatoes and potatoes still have the hairs. Tomatoes in particular are covered with these sticky hairs. They do trap small insects on a regular basis. They do kill insects.”

The number of these carnivorous plants is thought to have came up to 50 percent and many of them have until now been wrongly regarded as among the most harmless plants. Among them are species of petunia(矮牵牛), some special tobacco plants and cabbages, some varieties of potatoes and tomatoes, etc. Researchers at Royal Botanical Gardens Kew, which carried out the study, now believe there are hundreds more killer plants than previously realized.

It is thought that the technique was developed in the wild to get necessary nutrients in poor quality soil ­ and even various plants grown in your vegetable garden still have the ability.

The researchers, publishing their finding in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, said: “We may be surrounded by many more murderous plants than we think.” “We are accustomed to thinking of plants as being immobile and harmless, and there is something deeply frightening about the thought of meat­eating plants，” they added.

D

Shakespeare once called the English countryside “the precious stone set in the silver sea”— and he is not the last to sing high praises of its beauty and historical charm.

The countryside is particularly beautiful during the summer, especially in August and September. As one travels the countryside, you’ll find more of its treasures: so many plants and animals, romantic castles, secret gardens, and villages so unchanged in the last decades that they seem to have been caught under a fairy’s spell.

Must-sees include Derbyshire, called “the heart of England” and home to the National Park. The great peaks were the muse (创作灵感) of the Bronte sisters (and if you love the book Jane Eyre, you can visit North Lees hall, where the real Eyre family once lived).

History lovers will enjoy a visit to Lincoln city (its most famous son is Lord Alfred Tennyson). It is also known for its cathedral, the charming tea shops, a small castle. One would never guess its violent past — built by the Romans, it was once a center for arrow (箭) making.

Harry Potter fans shouldn’t miss a visit to Alnwick, which is better recognized as the “Hogswarth” in the movies.

Let’s not leave out the Wessex region, where one can see one of England’s greatest mysteries, Stone Henge. You can also go to the City of Bath, which has been famous for its medicines springs since the Roman times. Other popular attractions include Salisbury Cathedral, the landscaped gardens of Stourhead, and the cobbled (用鹅卵石铺的) streets of Shaftesbury. This is also home to Oxford, one of the world’s most famous universities.

Art lovers will also like a visit to East Anglia, whose landscapes inspired the painter Constable (he was born in Dedham village). This is also home of the University City of Cambridge, and the famous architectural attraction, King’s College Chapel. Be sure to visit the aircraft museum of Duxford.

B

    Earthquakes are something that people fear. There are some places that have few or no earthquakes. Most places in the world, however, have them regularly (经常). Countries that have a lot of earthquakes are usually quite mountainous．

    The most talked about earthquake in the United States was in San Francisco in 1906. Over 700 people died in it. The strongest one in North America was in 1964. It happened in Alaska．

    Strong earthquakes are not always the ones that kill the most people. In 1755, one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded was felt in Portugal. Around 2,000 people died.

    In 1923, a very strong earthquake hit Tokyo, the Yokohama area of Japan. A hundred and forty thousand people died. Most of them died in fires which followed the earthquake．

    One of the worst earthquakes ever was in China in 1976. It killed a large number of people. The worst earthquake ever reported was also in China, in which about 800,000 people were killed or injured. This earthquake happened in 2008．

     Earthquakes worry people a lot. The reason is that we often do not know when they are coming. People can not prepare for them．

The Disney theme park, its first on the Chinese mainland and the second in Greater China,after Hong Kong Disneyland, will open in Shanghai on June 16,a Thursday Tickets on sale willbegin on March 28, 2016.

   A standard single day ticket for the Shanghai Disney Resort costs 370 yuan ($56 2),while 8 peak-day ticket for festival and holiday periods will be sold for 499 yuan , the resort announcedon February 3rd.

   Children between l and l.4 meters tall and seniors aged over 65 years old can enjoy a 25% discount on the ticket price. A two-day ticket will be available at a 5 percent discount.

   Tickets can be booked on the official website or through the hotline 400-180-0000.

   In comparison with the other five Disney parks around the world, a one-day ticket for the Hong Kong Disney costs 539 Hong Kong dollars ($69.2) for adults aged 16 t0 64 years old, while that for the theme park in Tokyo is being sold at 6,900 yen ($58). Disney says the park will also reflect Chinese culture. The combination of Disney and Chinese cultures will be seen in many classic Chinese designs, such as a teahouse-Wandering Moon. Celebrations of seasonal festivals and stage shows will also include Chinese language, performers, theatrics and acrobatics (杂技) .

   The resort is expected to bring 5 million new passengers annually to the Pudong International Airport after it opens. It is also expected to attract 10 million visits a year.

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D

Scientists added a record of 715 more planets to the list known to the world beyond the solar system, astronomers said on Wednesday, in February 2014. The additions include four planets about 0.5-2 times as big as Earth that are the right distance from their parent stars for liquid surface water, which is believed to be fit for life.

The discoveries were made with the NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope. The telescope, launched in 2009, spent four productive years observing 160,000 target stars for signs of planets passing by, within the telescope’s sight.

The numbers of planets announced at a NASA press conference on Wednesday increased Kepler’s confirmed planets from 246 to 961. Combined with other telescopes’ results, the total number of planets beyond the solar system now is nearly 1,700. “We almost doubled, just today, the number of planets known to humans,” astronomer Douglas Hudgins, head of planet exploration at NASA Headquarters in Washington, told reporters on a conference call.

Many planets’ discovery is due to a new technique that analyzes potential planets in batches rather than one at a time. The method was developed after scientists realized that most planets, like those in the solar system, have similar worlds orbiting a common parent star.

The newly found planets strengthen the evidence that small planets, two to three times the size of Earth, are common throughout the galaxy(银河系).

“Generally, wherever (Kepler) can see them, it finds them,” said astronomer Sara Seager, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “That's why we have confidence that there will be planets like Earth in outer space.”

Like the solar system, which has eight planets plus Pluto and other so-called “dwarf planets,” the newly found planets belong to families. But unlike the solar system’s planets, which are about 150 times farther from the sun than Earth. Most of the planets fly nearer to their parent stars than Venus（金星） orbits the sun, a distance of about 67 million miles (108 million km.)

NASA and other space agencies are designing new telescopes to discover planets in so-called “habitable zones” around their parent stars where temperatures would be suitable for liquid surface water. Two papers on the new Kepler research will appear in an upcoming issue of ‘The Astrophysical Journal’.