The all-new Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium, situated in the heart of Melbourne's CBD, is one of Victoria's leading visitor attractions and an unforgettable outing for the whole family. Having 12 amazing zones of discovery, Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium is the very place that you cannot miss when you visit the city.

* Opening Times

     Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium is open from 9:30 am until 6:00 pm every day of the year, including public holidays. Last admission is at 5:00 pm, one hour before closing.

* Location ( 位置)

     Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium is located on the corner of Flinders Street and King Street, Melbourne. It is siyuated on the Yarra River, opposite Crown Entertainment Complex.

* Getting to Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium

     Train

     The Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium train stop is located on the free City Circle Tram route (公交线路) and also routes 70 and 75. City Circle trams run every 10 minutes in both directions.

     Shuttle Bus

     The Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium is a free bus service, stopping at key tourist attractions in and around the City. Running daily, every 15 minutes from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.

      Car Parking

      While there is no public car parking at Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium, there are several public car parking lots available only a short walk away.

* Wheelchair Access

      Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium provides people in wheelchairs with full access to all 12 zones. Each floor also has wheelchair accessible toilets.

* Terms

      Tickets will be emailed to you immediately after purchase or you can download and print your ticket once payment has been accepted. Please print out all tickets purchased and present at the front entrance of Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium. No ticket, no entry!

Inside the Rain Room

    The Rain Room has arrived and local art lovers are taking notice. Is it worth the wait? Yes, I assure you it is. Once inside, visitors find a long, dark room with a high ceiling. A single bright light shines through heavy rain falling around visitors. The mist. The damp air. The noise. It feels like a mighty storm is pouring down. But the storm is inside. And visitors aren't getting wet. Instead, visitors wander in awe, admiring the rain and the artists who created it.

    The Rain Room was created to highlight the connection between humans, nature and technology. With a tracking system that senses movement and stops the rain wherever visitors move, it does just that. Light and sound produce an experience that feels both natural and foreign. The exhibit is moving on to Atlanta next month. I urge you to visit before then. It's time to experience the Rain Room for yourself!

Welcome to the Rain Room

• The Rain Room features falling water. Please be aware you may get slightly wet. However, visitors wearing raincoats will be turned away.

• This exhibit features advanced technology. To ensure its effectiveness, please avoid wearing dark or reflective clothing.

• Visitors are welcome to take photographs of the exhibit.

• Children must be accompanied by an adult.

• For the convenience of all guests, visits are limited to 10 minutes.

    Most nations have at least one type of food that people from other countries think is unusual or unethical（不道德的）to eat. In France, people eat horse meat and frog legs. In South Korea and parts of China, restaurants serve dog meat. And in Australia, it's common to cook kangaroo meat on the barbecue and use emu（鸸鹋）eggs to make pancakes.

    The kangaroo and emu are native to Australia. Both animals are important to the national image of Australia and appear on the Australian coat of arms. They're also central figures in the history of the indigenous（土生土长的）Australian Aboriginals（土著人）. However, Aboriginal tribes still hunt these animals for their meat, fur and fat.

    Today, Australian people continue to eat these animals. One of the reasons people eat kangaroo meat is that it's high in protein and low in fat, so eating kangaroo is a good option for anyone on a diet. It's also cheaper to eat kangaroo meat than other red meats. Because of this, a lot of university students choose to buy kangaroo meat. BBC News also reported that Australian scientists believe that eating kangaroo meat is good for the environment--kangaroos have different digestive systems than cows and sheep, meaning they produce less methane（甲烷），the second biggest contributor to global warming.

    While emu meat is high in iron and vitamin C, most people don't think it tastes good. For this reason, they prefer emu eggs. One egg is large enough to make seven omelettes（煎蛋）. And while it's illegal to collect emu eggs from the wild, they can be bought from emu farms. Rather than cracking the beautiful dark shell, it's better to drain it by putting a small hole at each end and blowing. Afterwards, you can even carve a design into the eggshell.

    Getting stitched(缝合)up by Dr. Robot may one day be reality. Scientists have created a robotic system which did just that in living animals without a real doctor pulling the strings. Much like engineers are designing self-driving cars, the medical research is part of a move toward autonomous surgical robots, removing the surgeon's hands from certain tasks that a machine might perform all by itself.

    Doctors wouldn't leave the bedside they're supposed to watch, plus they'd handle the rest of the surgery. In small tests using pigs, the robotic arm performed at least as well, and in some cases a bit better, as some competing surgeons in stitching together intestinal(肠的)tissue. “The purpose wasn't to replace surgeons,” said Dr. Kim who led the project. “If you have all intelligent tool that works with a surgeon, can it improve the outcome? That's what we have done.”

    If you've heard about machines like the popular Da Vinci system, you might think robots already are operating. Not really. Today many hospitals offer robot-assisted surgery, where surgeons use the machinery as tools that they control by hand, typically,to operate through tiny openings in the body. But robot-assisted surgery has been controversial, as some studies have shown it can bring higher costs without better outcomes.

    Kim's team at Children's Sheikh Zayed Institute invented the new STAR system—it stands for Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot—works sort of like a programmable sewing machine. They added sensors to help guide each stitch and tell how tightly to pull. But the approach wasn't perfect. In the living animals, the robot took much longer and made a few stitching mistakes while the surgeon sewing by hand made none. Kim said the robot can be sped up. Fie hopes to begin human studies in two or three years.

    Dujiangyan is the oldest man­made water system in the world, and a wonder in the development of Chinese science. Built over 2, 200 years ago in what is now Sichuan Province in Southwest China, this amazing engineering achievement is still used today to irrigate over 6, 000 square kilometers of farmland, take away floodwater and provide water for 50 cities in the province.

    In ancient times, the region in which Dujiangyan now stands suffered from regular floods caused by overflow from the Minjiang River. To help the victims of the flooding, Li Bing, the region's governor, together with his son, decided to find a solution. They studied the problem and discovered that the river most often overflowed when winter snow at the top of the nearby Mount Yulei began to melt as the weather warmed.

    The simplest fix was to build a dam, but this would have ruined the Minjiang River. So instead Li designed a series of channels built at different levels along Mount Yulei that would take away the floodwater while leaving the river flowing naturally. Better still, the extra water could be directed to the dry Chengdu Plain, making it suitable for farming.

    Cutting the channels through the hard rock of Mount Yulei was a remarkable accomplishment as it was done long before the invention of gunpowder and explosives. Li Bing found another solution. He used a combination of fire and water to heat and cool the rocks until they cracked and could be removed. After eight years of work, the 20­metre­wide canals had been carved through the mountain.

    Once the system was finished, no more floods occurred and the people were able to live peacefully and affluently. Today, Dujiangyan is admired by scientists from around the world because of one feature. Unlike modern dams where the water is blocked with a huge wall, Dujiangyan still lets water flow through the Minjiang River naturally, enabling ecosystems and fish populations to exist in harmony.

    A person can use all five senses while spending time with dolphins. We can see them play in the waves, hear them call, and feel their skin. Dolphins can sense you, too, but not in all the same ways. They have good eyesight, for example, but no sense of smell. Sensory biologists try to understand connections between animal behaviors and the senses. One team of these scientists recently made an unexpected discovery about certain dolphins.

    The researchers found that Guiana dolphins can detect electric fields, an ability that may help them find fish to eat. The secret to this newly found sense, say the scientists, is hidden in the dolphins' snouts (口鼻部).

    "We were really surprised to find this in the dolphin. Nobody had expected it," said Wolf Hanke, who led the new dolphin study.

    Hanke and his team suspected the dolphin's electro－sense might have something to do with small dimples (酒窝) on the animal's snout. "We thought they must have some functions," Hank said. To find out for certain, his team studied two Guiana dolphins.

    The scientists first studied the dimples of a 29－year－old dolphin that had died of natural causes. Under a microscope, the dimples looked familiar: they were similar to the sensors used by other animals to detect electric fields.

    Next, Hanke and his team tested a live dolphin, a 28－year－old named Paco, to see if he could recognize an electric field. They taught Paco to swim close to a device that could create a weak electric field in the water. Then the team taught Paco to swim away from the device if he detected any changes. When the scientists created an electric field, Paco swam away—showing that he knew something had changed. When there was no electric field, Paco stayed there. When Paco's snout was covered in plastic, he didn't react to the electric field.

    Paco's behavior told the scientists that the dolphin used his snout to detect the tiny electric field. "This is a major breakthrough," Peter Madsen, a sensory biologist, said.