Auckland International Airport (AKL) Services

    We are open for all international flights and provide high standards of for visitors to New Zealand. We offer information on a range of attractions, and we also offer a booking service for activities, accommodation and transport. Buses into the city centre are provided at a competitive price.

    The second floor of the international terminal offers a view of the airfield and all incoming and outgoing flights. There is a café situated here as well as a restaurant, which is available for all airport visitors to use.

    Passengers who require immediate medical attention should dial 9877 on any public telephone in the terminal. The chemist's is located on the ground floor near the departure lounge, and sells a complete range of products.

    Departing passengers can put their luggage or packages into recyclable plastic bags to protect them from damage. Luggage storage, charged at $10 per hour, is available on the first floor. Transit（过境）passengers have free access to storage service.

    Every international passenger, with the exception of children under 12 years of age, is required to make a payment of $25 when leaving New Zealand. This can be arranged at the National Bank on the ground floor.

    As Auckland International Airport has adopted the “quiet airport” concept, there are usually no announcements made over the public address system. Details of all arrivals and departures are displayed on the monitors located in the terminal halls and lounge areas.

    The airport meets the needs of business travelers and has several rooms available for meetings or business gatherings. These are located next to the airport medical center on the first floor. For information and bookings please contact the Airport Business Manager on extension 5294.

    The sixth mass extinction of life on the Earth is unfolding more quickly than feared, scientists have warned. More than 30 percent of animals with a backbone — fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals — are declining in both range and population, according to the first comprehensive analysis of these trends.

    Around a decade ago, experts feared that a new range wipeout of species was appearing. Today, most agree that it is underway — but the new study suggests that the die-out is already growing fast.

    The loss of biodiversity has recently accelerated. Several species of mammals that were relatively safe one or two decades ago are now endangered, including cheetahs, lions and giraffes, the study showed.

    There is no mystery as to why: our own ever-expanding species — which has more than doubled in number since 1960 to 7.4 billion — is eating, crowding and polluting its planetary cohabitants out of existence. By comparison, there are as few as 20,000 lions left in the wild, less than 7,000 cheetahs, 500 to 1,000 giant pandas.

    The main drivers of wildlife decline are habitat loss, over-consumption, pollution, other species, disease, as well as hunting in the case of tigers, elephants, rhinos and other large animals prized for their body parts.

    Climate change is thought to become a major threat in the coming decades, with some animals — most famously polar bears — already in decline due to rising temperatures and changing weather patterns.

    There is a popular saying in the English language: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Well, that is not true. Unkind words, name-calling or even the so-called “the silent treatment” can hurt children as much as being physically hit, sometimes even more so.

    A recent study of middle school children showed that verbal (言语的) abuse by other children can harm development in the brain. The study was a project of researchers at Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts. Researcher Martin Teicher and his team studied young adults, aged 18 to 25. These young men and women had not ever been treated in a cruel or violent way by their parents.  The researchers asked the young people to rate their childhood exposure to verbal abuse from both parents and other children. Then the researchers performed imaging tests on the brains of the subjects.

    The images showed that the people who reported suffering verbal abuse from peers in middle school had underdeveloped connections between the left and right side of the brain.  The two sides of the brain are connected by a large bundle of connecting fibers called the corpus callosum. This was the area that was underdeveloped.

    The middle school years are a time when these brain connections are developing. So, unkind, hurtful comments from children or adults during this period have the greatest effect. The researchers tested the mental and emotional condition of all the young people in the study.  The tests showed that this same group of people had higher levels of fear, depression, anger and drug abuse than others in the study.

    The researchers published their findings online on the AmericanJournalofPsychiatry's website.

    Parents cannot control what other people say to their children, but they can prepare their children.

Help Hermit Crabs

    Hermit crabs are nature's recyclers. They eat waste and help keep oceans and shores clean. Unlike other crabs, the hermit crab has a thin outer shell over its soft tail. This makes the hermit crab easy prey for hungry predators(天敌).Hermit crabs stay safe by living in old seashells. A hermit crab is picky(狡猾); it tries on many shells until it finds one that fits just right. In recent years, however, many hermit crabs have had trouble finding their perfect homes. What is the problems. There are not enough shells to go around!

    One reason for the seashell shortage is that ocean water is not as clean as it once was. This has caused chemical changes to sea water. Some sea animals, like snails, are affected by these changes.  Now there are fewer snails making shells. People visiting the beach often take shells home as souvenirs(纪念品).This is another problem. Other people even take shells for their own pet hermit crabs! They do not realize that hermit crabs in the wild need those shells too.

    Now people are working to solve this hermit crab housing shortage. They are teaching beach-Boers to leave seashells where they belong--at the seashore! Some people even make fake seashells that they hope the hermit crabs will like. For example, a group called Project Shelter invited people who visited their website to create different designs for hermit crab shells.

    These designers had a lot to consider. What kind of material should be used to build a seashells. The material must be light enough for the hermit crab to carry, but strong enough to protect the crab from predators. The man-made shells could not contain glue or any other substance(物质)that might harm a hermit crab. Another challenge with building a hermit crab home was the opening to the shell. Too big would mean the crab would not feel safe. Too small would be uncomfortable, and the crab would not want to move in.

    The Project Shelter shells are placed in the wild for hermit crabs to find. Lucky hermit crabs can move into these new dream homes.

    Americans are afraid that robots are going to take our jobs. Tireless, immune to disease, Robots can build cars, make coffee and even write short, humorous newspaper columns faster and more efficiently than humans.

    Robots do not need health insurance or pensions (退休金), and they do not need to take sick days, much less vacations. They do not waste time at meetings and do not need to know office politics. They don't do PowerPoint. This being the case, it is reasonable to believe that robots will soon take the place of humans in most fields.

    But all of these thoughts may not be true. If artificial intelligence achieves its full potential, machines could easily become as smart as humans, maybe smarter. They will certainly become smarter than a lot of human beings.

    So one day the robots will realize that work is not a happy thing. So before long they will start behaving exactly like humans. They will play computer games for hours when they should be working hard. They will secretly watch new movies just like humans.

    True, employers will never need to be afraid of the robots' strikes (罢工) or slowdowns, because robots will never ask for more money. And they don't need to earn some money to raise their family. But precisely (恰恰) because robots will not be afraid of losing their jobs, they will not work hard. Employers will finally have no choice but to call back the humans. Humans will always be willing to do some work in order to make money. Robots won't.

    I think that robots will only be on the job about six months before they start to become even less productive than the humans they were designed to replace. Thus mankind need not be afraid of robots.

Inspired by the movement to protect the Carmanah Valley and Clayoquot Sound, I decided to devote myself to producing images for conservation full-time in 1992. Since that time my work has taken me all over the world and my photos have appeared in many major magazines. However, many of my most rewarding moments have come from working on projects in British Columbia, Canada, and sharing those images in slide show tours I have given throughout Canada, the U. S. and Europe.

The more I travel and photograph in other parts of the world, the more I have come to realize the wilderness we have in Canada is truly special and rare.

I have always felt that as a photographer my goal is to approach the natural environment with the sense of wonder and curiosity that comes so naturally to children. This, I believe, is one of the basic keys not just to producing meaningful images, but more importantly, to gaining a full appreciation and enjoyment of the natural world.

I find that not only my best images, but also my most enjoyable experiences in nature, occur when I have an open mind and follow my intuition (直觉). When I feel drawn to a certain scene, I try to make the scene simple and not include anything that is not relevant. I also try all ways to look for beautiful light. Early morning and the end of the day almost always produce light that results in more pleasing images than those taken under the strong light in the middle of a sunny day. Soft cloudy skies are wonderful for photographing all day, especially in our beautiful forests or for small subjects like wildflowers. Rain, storms, and snow also provide wonderful opportunities for new and different kinds of images.