Green tree ants are important builders in the rainforest. They're like the worker bees of the ant world. The native forest of Thala Beach Nature Reserve is the natural home of these insects.

    They climb all over the tree that contains their nest and protect it from enemies with great fierceness. The ants are often in the fruiting trees of Tropical North Queensland. When an animal tries to help themselves to some tasty fruit, they find themselves attacked by a powerful, frightening army of green tree ants! Their bite is not very painful but many ants attacking at the same time can be extremely uncomfortable.

    The nests are large and constructed by sticking the leaves at the end of branches together to create a home looking roughly like a globe. Most of the nest construction and weaving is conducted at night. A mature colony of green tree ants can hold as many as 100,000 to 500,000 workers and may include as many as 12 trees and contain as any as 150 nests. Green tree ant colonies have one queen and a colony can live up to eight years.

    However, the ants are so busy that they fail to spot a dishonest figure. There is a spider called the Salticid spider, or the jumping spider, as they are sometimes referred to, which has excellent eyesight and is only active during daylight, weaving a protective covering of silk to spend the night in. Interestingly, the Salticid spider does not look like a green tree ant. Instead, it chemically copies green tree ants' smell. Effectively pretending to be an ant, it goes into the green tree ants' nest, enters the nursery and feasts on their babies. Green tree ants don't have good eyesight and smell everything with their antennae (two long thin parts on an ant's head). Therefore, the ants think the spider is another ant and ignore its presence within the nest.

    Next time, as you wander around Thala's native forest, keep an eye out for these busy little creatures. Look up into the trees and you'll likely spot their nests.

    Tourism is often about seeking deeper emotional and personal connections with the world around us. Not all travel experiences, however, need to take place in the real world. With the evolution of virtual reality (VR) technology, tourism will increasingly become a combination of physical and virtual worlds. VR may even remove the need to travel entirely.

    But can a VR experience really equal a real world one? Many experts believe it can. Studies have shown that our brains have an inbuilt VR-like mechanism that enables us to live imagined experiences. Much of our waking life is spent thinking about either the past or the future. This is known as" mind wandering". During these events we're not paying attention to the current world around us. Instead, we're recalling memories, or creating and processing imagined futures.

    When engaged in mind wandering, our brains process these mental images using the same pathways used to receive inputs from the real world. So, the imagined past or future can create emotions and feelings similar to how we react to everyday life. VR can create these same feelings.

    While critics might argue that a virtual experience will never match reality, there are several ways VR tourism could make a positive contribution. Firstly it could help protect sensitive locations from over-tourism. In recent years famous sites such as Maya Bay in Thailand, and Cambodia's Angkor Wat Temples have had to limit the number of visitors because of their negative impact. These places are now producing their own VR experiences that will allow tourists to pass through virtual models of the sites.

    Virtual reality may also allow people back in time, to experience historical events, visit ancient cities, and even to walk among dinosaurs.

    Finally, in a world where many people suffer from stress and depression due to overwork, virtual tourism may provide a cheap and convenient way for people to take brief holidays to otherwise unreachable destinations and recharge their batteries, without ever leaving their homes.

    It sounds like science fiction but it's already happening. As virtual technology improves and as people continue to demand new and interesting experiences, expect more virtual tourism, both in combination with the real world and instead of it.

    The Trans-Siberian Railway is a single train line that crosses nearly the complete length of Russia, from Moscow to Vladivostok. It covers a total of 5,772 miles, running from Europe to Asia. Unlike the longest flight in the world, which just began transporting passengers in 2018, the Trans-Siberian Railway started its business in 1916.

    Anyone who has taken this long journey, or even just part of it, will tell you that it travels at a rather slow speed, passing through some amazing, remote areas of Russia. You don't have to make the full journey without stopping. Instead, you're suggested to get off where there are attractive views, since it stops in some pretty fantastic places. But you certainly can take the full journey non-stop. If you do, the trip will take about 144 hours—six full days!

    You can book tickets with travel agencies. You can also make the booking online and tickets will be sent to your hotel or personal address. Children under 4 years old accompanied by adults can travel free, but cannot take up a seat. A child ticket needs to be bought if you want to get a seat for the child.

    There are longer railway services in the transportation world, but only one of them is a passenger line as some longer routes transport goods, not travelers. This railway may not be the fastest or the most modern, but it's clearly still an important player in the transportation world!

WELCOME AND ARRIVAL INFORMATION

    Welcome to Harvard University Housing and thank you for choosing to live with us. To help you make a smooth transition please read the information below on panning your arrival.

    Pets

    Dogs living with you in your pet-friendly apartment must be vaccinated(接种疫苗) for rabies and licensed with the City of Cambridge every year.

    International Students

    Consider unlocking your phone prior to leaving your home county. This will enable you to use a SIM card from a company such as campus SIMS or US Mobile in your phone after you arrive. Those SIM cards may be available at the Property Management Office.

    Driving

    If you plan on bringing a moving van or truck it will not fit under the overpasses(天桥) on Soldiers Field Road and Memorial Drive. Plan your route in advance to avoid a risky and costly problem.

    Parking arrangements for trucks and vans must be made in advance as well. Visit your property page for information about parking your car.

    Furniture and Lighting

    Most HUH units have no furniture-the unit is empty except for a stove and a refrigerator. You need to bring, buy, or rent a bed, other furniture, and household items. In many HUH units, rooms do not have overhead lights, so you also may need table or floor lamps.

    If you want to stock up on groceries and some household items as soon as you arrive, please find information about "Grocery Shopping" by clicking the drop-down menu.

Richard Holmes, a British author and academic, is something of a Romantic, famous for biographies of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In his last book, "The Age of Wonder", he wrote about science and Romanticism and their common commitment to discovery. In his new book, "Falling Upwards", he combines the two again to tell the stories of Europe's early balloonists (气球飞行者).

Mr Holmes's love of balloons was aroused at a village festival and his enthusiasm is one of the book's many pleasures. He refers to the cheerful tone used in many first-hand ballooning stories, and applies it in this second-hand account. He describes men and women wrapped up in fur coats under their hydrogen-filled balloons, enjoying cold chicken and champagne and looking back to earth to see mankind "for what it really is."

Mr Holmes makes much of the strange side of ballooning, but the book is at its best when examining its more serious applications. In the American civil war, for example, both North and South put observers in balloons to spy on enemy movements. And during the Prussian attack on Paris in 1870-71， balloonists managed to fly out of the city to communicate with the French government in exile (流亡) in Tours.

"Falling Upwards" contains much of the historian's writing characteristics, such as footnotes and bibliography (文献书目), but its epilogue (后记) refers modestly to what has gone before as "a series of true balloon stories". It does touch on the more technical aspects of ballooning, and says little about the French Montgolfier brothers who are credited as its inventors. That though seems a small price to pay for such a spirited work. Mr Holmes's tale ends at the start of the 20th century when the business of flight was being handed over to the airship and the airplane.

As the school year barely(刚刚) starts in Denver, French teacher Melanie is filled with worry that her students are always absent-minded. Yet, the problem isn't messaging, enjoying video games or delivering notes. Surprisingly, the problem is about the ongoing heat wave in Denver.

"Today was a little bit hot, so I noticed that kids were very sleepy and they had to get up to drink water quite often." said Melanie, who works at Denver East High School. "If you lose too much water, you have to keep going to the water fountain, which can take away from their classroom experience." While nodding off in class on a warm day may seem acceptable for average teens, Melanie's observation carries a bigger result than dry lips.

There have been quite a few media reports about teachers noticing that students were not able to focus on hotter days," said RJisung Park, a researcher. "Does a hotter climate during the school year actually affect the rate of learning?" The drop in academic achievements couldn't be explained by hotter weekends or hotter summers, but the trend was connected to higher temperatures on school days alone.

The connection between lost learning and a greater number of hot days is one more example of how climate change is already affecting our lives, and it's an alarm bell for what we stand to lose in the future.

Humans still have time to lessen the global warming. Without any important changes in the next 10 years, the globe will be trapped in heat waves that might be too much for human beings.