There's new hope for corals in areas of the Great Barrier Reef damaged by warmer waters caused by climate change. Experts are using robots and clever methods to deliver millions of new baby corals. In recent years, coral reefs around the world have been damaged by rising ocean temperatures caused by global heating. This is often called “coral bleaching” because huge areas of corals can turn white as they die.

Scientists in Australia are working on a new way of restoring damaged reefs. Their system uses underwater robots and robotic boats to deliver millions of tough coral babies onto damaged reefs. Corals reproduce by releasing eggs and sperm into the water. Eggs and sperm combine to become baby corals, some of which would settle back on the coral reef and grow there, while others would be washed to other areas to start new coral colonies.

Professor Peter Harrison of Southern Cross University came up with an idea to help restore damaged coral reefs. His idea was to collect eggs and sperm from healthy corals that have survived in higher temperatures. The coral babies need about seven days to develop before they can be spread onto damaged reefs, Professor Harrison created floating “nurseries” preventing them from being washed away.

The problem of how to get all these coral babies onto the damaged reefs is where robotics expert Matthew Dunbabin comes in. Professor Dunbabin works at Queensland University of Technology. In 2015, he designed an underwater robot called “RangerBot”. RangerBot can track down and kill a certain kind of sea star that is damaging coral reefs.

Last year, Professor Matthew Dunbabin changed his RangerBot design “LarvalBot”, ，which can deliver coral babies directly onto the areas where they are most needed. This robotic boat can cover an area six times at size in just six hours, which means delivering more coral babies farther and faster. If all goes well, in about three years these corals will release their own eggs and sperm, and begin to reproduce naturally.

But Professor Harrison says that trying to restore coral reefs in this way is not enough to keep them safe. He says, “Urgent action on climate change is required” to make sure they survive.

It’s a sunny afternoon at the Bronx Zoo, in New York City. Children are excited as a female Asian elephant named Happy comes into view. Waving her ears from side to side and wrapping her trunk around the fence leisurely, Happy seems to be living a happy life.

The Bronx Zoo is one of about 60 zoos in the U. S. where you can see an elephant. With the number of Asian elephants declining every year—only about 50,000 are left in the wild—a zoo might be the only chance any of us will ever get to see one.

But the Nonhuman Rights Project(NhRP), an animal—rights group, says Happy is lonely. A fence separates her from Patty, another elephant. Contact through a fence isn’t enough, the NhRP says. Steven is the group’s president. “We understand what Happy’s life means to her,” he says, “which is almost nothing at all.”

So the NhRP is taking the Bronx Zoo to court. The group says Happy should be moved to a protected area where she can have space to hang about and interact with other elephants. The NhRP’s case against the Bronx Zoo is the first of its kind in the U. S. The group is relying on a legal order meant for humans. It says a person who has been unlawfully imprisoned must be released. The NhRP will argue in court that Happy should have that same right.

Experts say elephants are intelligent and thrive when they form social ties in the wild. Joyce Poole studies them in Africa. She thinks keeping elephants in a city is “a recipe for disaster”. “As you can imagine, if you were locked behind bars and lost freedom, would there be much you could do?” she says.

But the Bronx Zoo insists that Happy is well cared for according to animal protection laws Besides, some people claim removing animals like Happy from zoos would be a mistake because zoos reach more people than any other group involved with conservation. They believe if there’s a time when children can no longer visit zoos to grow up with a connection to the animals, it’ll come at a great cost.

Previous studies have suggested that early risers are more likely to be happy and healthy while night owls experience worse sleep as well as more depression and anxiety during the day.

Led by Jessica Rosenberg at Aachen University, researchers scanned the brains of 16 early risers, 23 night owls and 20 people with intermediate sleeping hours. They found that the brains of night owls had less “white matter”— which speeds up the transmission (传输) of nerve signals — in brain areas associated with depression.

As you know, after people fly in an airplane from one time zone to another, they often suffer from a confused and tired feeling called “jet lag” because their body clocks are out of sync(不同步的) with the new time zone. It usually takes about a week for their bodies to adjust to the new time. But night owls always have difficulty syncing their bodies to the right time due to their brain structure. “It’s like they suffer from permanent jet lag,” said Rosenberg.

The good news is that it is possible for night owls to turn themselves into morning people. According to the researchers, night owls should try to spend as much time in the sunlight as possible and reduce their exposure to artificial light at night to force their body clocks to shift to a more normal rhythm.