A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech integrated systems. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.

    “It's extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just the sum of a bunch of individual components (元件),” said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on the robotic fly project for over a decade. A few years ago, his team got the go-ahead to start piecing together the components.“The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own,” he said.

    They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. “The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of interdependencies on the individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it's connected to,” said Wood. The flight device was built into a set of power, computation, sensing and control systems. Wood says the success of the project proves that the flying robot with these tiny components can be built and manufactured.

    While this first robotic flyer is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it with a built-in power source, so that it might someday perform data-gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers' fields or on the battlefield. “Basically it should be able to take off, land and fly around,” he said.

    Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications. “You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead,” he said. “So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis.”

    Have you ever run into a careless cell phone user on the street? Perhaps they were busy talking, testing or checking updates on WeChat without looking at what was going on around them. As the number of this new “species” of human has kept rising, they have been given a new name — phubbers (低头族).

    Recently, a cartoon created by students from China Central Academy of Fine Arts put this group of people under the spotlight. In the short film, phubbers with various social identities bury themselves in their phones. A doctor plays with his cell phone while letting his patient die, a pretty woman takes selfie in front of a car accident site and a father loses his child without knowing about it while using his mobile phone. A chain of similar events eventually leads to the destruction of the world.

    Although the ending sounds overstated, the damage phubbing can bring is real. Your health is the first to bear the effect and result of it. “Constantly bending your head to check your cell phone could damage your neck,” Guangming Daily quoted doctors as saying. “The neck is like a rope that breaks after long-term stretching.” Also, staring at cell phones for long periods of time will damage your eyesight gradually, according to the report.

    But that's not all. Being a phubber could also damage your social skills and drive you away from your friends and family. At reunions with family or friends, many people tend to stick to their cell phones while others are chatting happily with each other and this creates a strange atmosphere, Qilu Evening News reported.

    It can also cost you your life. There have been lots of reports on phubbers who fell to their death, suffered accidents, and were robbed of their cell phones in broad daylight.

    A new study says electronic toys are not helping babies learn.

    "Even if companies are marketing them as educational, they're not teaching the babies anything at this time," said Anna Sosa the study's author.

    Researchers listened to audio(声音的) recordings of parents playing with their babies aged 10 months to 16 months. The researchers compared the experiences when the children played with electronic toys, traditional toys such as blocks, or when the children looked at books. What they found is that parents talked less with their babies when the babies played with electronic toys.

    Why is this important? Research shows that how quickly children develop language is often based on what they hear from parents. When the infants played with electronic toys, parents said little to their children. But with traditional toys, such as blocks, parents shared the names and descriptions of the animals, colors and shapes as their children played. There was even more information given by parents as their babies looked at the pictures in books.

    Of course, there is no need for parents to throw out electronic toys, but they should look at their infants' play with such toys as entertainment, not a learning experience.

    Toy Industry Association spokeswoman Adrienne Appell responded to the study. She said it is important that parents make time to play with their children. "Playing is a way that kids can learn so much, not only cognitive(认知的) skills, but social and developmental skills," she said. She added that play should be balanced, including time for just "make believe" activities, as well as traditional and electronic toys.

    During his freshman year at Mission Viejo High School in the United States, Chance Blanscet told his parents he wanted to score a touchdown (触地得分) for the Diablos football team.

    Born with dwarfism (侏儒症), Blanscet, now 16 and a sophomore (高二学生),

doesn't have the size of a football player, but his courage more than enough makes up for this. On May 19, Mission Viejo High's cheerleaders called Chance's name as he seized (抓住) his opportunity.

    Taking a hand-off (传球) from the receiver, Blanscet raced toward the end zone as fast as he could, while his teammates created a path for Blanscet straight across the goal line.

    After scoring his touchdown, the players lifted him up and celebrated.

    Blanscet spent the first six years of his life in local hospitals before getting adopted (收养) by parents Andy and Michele Blanscet.

    When they brought him home, he couldn't speak and could only walk with the help of a walking frame (助行架). But as he grew older and stronger, he needed less medical attention.

    Blanscet was received with open arms at his high school and became interested in football after attending the first game of his freshman year.

    After meeting Diablos head coach Bob Johnson, he was eventually asked to lead the team's junior squad (小队).“This is an amazing group,” Michele Blanscet said. “They're so supportive. They view him for his abilities, not his disabilities.”

    Blanscet's video class filmed the entire event, from Blanscet leading the team to his post-touchdown celebration. And instead of shouting “Diablos,” the players shouted “Chance”.

    That's a thing of a lifetime,” Johnson said. “He tries to make it to every game. This is just a special thing they wanted to do for him.”

    The scenes will be used for a video Blanscet is working on for class. It will also include highlights of football games from last fall, and interviews with players and cheerleaders.

    “We needed something big to go with it,” said Marty Deutschman, who has been Blanscet's one-on-one instructor (教员) for three years. Deutschman organized the event about a month ago.

    Everyone was immediately on board. “We're so impressed with the school spirit,” Andy Blanscet said. “The students are there for each other and they were able to put together such a big event in a short time with all that enthusiasm.”

    To ensure an excellent experience during your tour of the Mark Twain House, here are some guidelines and general information:

The House is Shown Only by Guided Tour.

    To ensure an optimum (最佳) experience, house tours are limited to 14 people, first-come, first-served. If your group has more than 10 people, call (860) 280-3130 to reserve a discounted group tour in advance of your visit. If you have a party of fewer than 10 people feel free to purchase tickets online: We will hold them at Will Call. The tour schedule is usually online about a month in advance.

Our site is made up of three buildings

    The Webster Bank Museum Center at the Mark Twain House & Museum is always your first and last stop as it houses our ticket counter, museum store, film, exhibits and cafe. All tours gather in the museum center before heading over to Mark Twain's historic 1874 home. Mark Twain's historic carriage house is the third building on our property, but is generally not open to the public. The hayloft (干草棚) has been repurposed into offices and the main floor of the barn is a space available for rent for parties and meetings.

Coupons & Discounts

    The Mark Twain House offers only a few coupons and discounts. The price you pay for admission helps us maintain the beauty of this icon of American architecture. If you are lucky enough to find one of those special offers online or at your local library, keep in mind they are good only for the general Mark Twain House Tours. No passes or discounts may be applied to our specialty tours.

As the world deals with the rising temperatures brought by climate change, the demand for cooling solutions in hot, dry regions becomes increasingly pressing. However, traditional air conditioning systems produce massive greenhouse gases and use lots of energy.

Facing these challenges, a research team from McGill University, UCLA, and Princeton have found an inexpensive, sustainable cooling method. Their approach not only offers a solution for cooling but also promises to address the problem of heat waves during electricity blackouts.

The researchers set out to achieve a new standard in passive cooling (无动力制冷) within naturally conditioned buildings in hot climates such as Southern California. They aimed to address an important question: how can passive cooling techniques outperform traditional air conditioning units and improve indoor comfort?

The key to this breakthrough lies in harnessing the potential of radiative (辐射的) cooling materials, specifically in the context of housing design. Traditionally, such materials have been employed to prevent roofs(屋顶) from overheating and improve heat rejection from cooling systems. However, the research team recognised that there is under-explored potential in integrating these materials into building design — they can not only remove waste indoor heat but also drive regular and healthy air changes.

Lead author Remy Fortin stated, "We found we could maintain air temperatures several degrees below the surrounding temperature."Remarkably, they achieved this success without giving up a healthy airing. This was never a piece of cake, considering air exchange can unintendedly introduce heat into the building when the goal is to keep the inside cooler than the outside.

The researchers are hopeful that their findings will be used to positively impact communities suffering from climatic heating and heat waves. Salmaan Craig, the principal researcher expressed their expectations: "We hope that materials scientists, designers, and engineers will be interested in these results and that our work will inspire more broader thinking for how to integrate breakthroughs in radiative cooling materials with simple but effective solutions."