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.”

    Today, many people use plants from other places to design their yards. Well, do they have any influence on animals living nearby? As we know, plants supply food for things like insects and plant-eating animals. In turn, birds and meat-eating animals feed on these insects and plant-eating animals. It is easy to see how important plants are.

    Although foreign plants may look beautiful, they can cause problems when there are too many of them. I live in Virginia, USA, and sometimes see a plant—commonly known as Kudzu—that seems to cover everything in the area, even climbing over whole trees and houses.

    Kudzu is an unbelievable plant since it grows very fast. It was first brought to the United States from south-east Asia around the 1870's as a crop that farmers could grow. However, Kudzu quickly came to be considered harmful throughout the southern United States.

    Since Kudzu grows fast in many different environments, it can completely cover areas of land quickly. The plant is also not eaten by any insects or birds in the United States so it can grow unchecked. Kudzu can cover trees, bushes, and even houses. It costs the United States 500 million dollars a year to just keep Kudzu from growing too fast. The plant is a perfect example of what scientists call an invasive (侵略性的) species, which grows more quickly than other native plants.

    All foreign plants have the possibility to spread quickly. Not only are they costly, but planting them in gardens actually takes away food from insects. If everyone filled their garden with plants native to where they live, many lovely butterflies and other native creatures would be attracted to their backyards! So, take a look out of your window — how does your garden grow?

    Opening week specials at Munchies Food Hall

    At the corner of Green and Brown Streets in the city

    Monday, 7th of January until Sunday, 1 3th of January 2008

    Feast until you're full!

    Come down to Munchies this week to enjoy the special dishes on offer at all of our food outlets. Order from the following:

    Succulent chicken rice     • Spicy satay beef            •DeliciOus noodle dishes

    Plump pork chops            • Seafood specialties         • Crunchy vegetables

    Sweet tropical fruit

    10% discount on all orders above $ 20.00

    Halal food is available at the stall Malay Food Heaven.

    Win Prizes and Gifts!

    Spend $ 20.00 or more and win instant prizes from our lucky draw box.

    Collect a free party balloon and whistle for each young diner.

    Enjoy a free meal if you are the first customer of the day at any of our stalls.

    Win a holiday to Westem Australia. A free raffle ticket is given with every receipt. Just fill in your information and place your entry in the box provided.

    Winner to be announced in The Straits Times on the 15th of January.

    Join in the Fun!

    Between 7:00 pm and 8:00 pm each evening until the 10th of January, your favorite Channel 3 television actors and singers will entertain you:

    May Lee      • Jackie Chen       • Kim Yap             • Kamal

    Autograph sessions will follow each performance! And who will be our extra special mystery star? Come down on Saturday at noon to find out.

    Research finds out why some people are constantly under attack from the bloodsucking insects while others walk free.

    For those unfortunate enough to feature highly on the mosquito hit list, summer nights can be synonymous with mosquito bites. Yet others hardly ever get bitten. So how do the bloodthirsty insects select their victims?

    The insects' tastes may seem arbitrary. However, research shows that when mosquitoes make their choices between potential victims, it all comes down to scent (气味).

    “Mosquitoes are attracted by carbon dioxide and heat, which everyone gives off. But mosquitoes are also attracted by certain scents,” says Karl-Martin Vagn Jensen, the head of research at the Department of Agricultural Science at Arhus University.

    According to Jensen, it has not yet been confirmed exactly what the scents in question are. But research does indicate that some scents are more attractive to mosquitoes than others.

    “All the lab employees rubbed petri dishes (培养皿) against their stomachs. In that way, their scents were put on the dishes, which were then put in a container full of mosquitoes,” he says. “The mosquitoes repeatedly landed on some of the petri dishes, but didn't go anywhere near the others.”

    Perhaps taking inspiration from popular fiction, there are also those who consider garlic as an excellent repellent (驱虫剂) against the winged bloodsuckers. According to the researcher, this strategy may not be entirely fruitless. “As far as I know, there is no scientific proof that eating garlic works. But there may be something to the theory that it's possible to mask scent with garlic,” he says. The only reliable method of protection against mosquitoes is to use repellents that are sold over the counter. It contains some smells that can confuse the mosquitoes. When the mosquito comes closer, it uses smell, heat and carbon dioxide to decide whether to bite. But if it is confused by a repellent, it will never get that far.

    Explorers had been landing in America for some time before English settlers arrived in what is now Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. But it was in that spot on the James River that English colonization(殖民化) began, and with it, the history of America.

    James I was the king of England at that time, and he had granted approval for a group of businessmen who were part of the Virginia Company to settle in this new land. In all, 214 people set sail for America. They reached it on May 14, 1607. Very soon after they landed, the English found themselves under attack from Algonquins, a native American tribe(部落) who had been living in that area for some time. The English managed to drive off the attackers and stay there.

Under the leadership of Captain John Smith, the English built a fort(城堡)and other buildings designed to protect their new colony. They also found friendly native Americans, like Powhatan, who was willing to trade with them.

    There was a terrible winter in 1609 and only 60 of the 214 settlers survived, which was also hard on Powhatan's tribe and other neighboring native Americans.

    One of the main crops grown by the English settlers was tobacco, which they sold to native Americans and to people back in England, beginning in 1612. Tobacco became a very popular crop because it was easy to grow and because it brought in so much money.

    Once the money started flowing in regularly, the Jamestown colony grew, as did other settlements in Virginia and in other states along the eastern coastline.

    America's first elected assembly (议会), the House of Burgesses, met in Jamestown for the first time on July 30, 1619. The year 1619 also saw another significant development: the first arrival of black workers on boats from Africa. These men and women were originally servants, who worked a small piece of land for a few years and then got to keep the land as owners. Jamestown was also the capital of Virginia and remained so until 1698.

    Let children learn to judge their own work. A child learning to talk does not learn by being corrected all the time; if corrected too much, he will stop talking. He notices a thousand times a day the difference between the language he uses and the language those around him use. Bit by bit, he makes the necessary changes to make his language like other people's. In the same way, children learn to do all the other things without being taught to walk, run, climb, whistle, ride a bicycle…They compare their own performances with those of more skilled people, and slowly make the needed changes. But in school we never give a child a chance to find out his mistakes and correct them for himself. We do it all for him. We act as if we thought that he would never notice a mistake. If it is a matter in mathematics or science, give him the answer book. Let him correct his own papers. Why should we teachers waste time in such routine(日常的) work? Our job should be to help the child when he tells us that he can't find the way to get the right answer. Let the children learn what all educated persons must some day learn, how to measure their own understanding, how to know what he does not know.