Computer technology has become a major part of people's lives. This technology has its own special words. One example is the word " mouse". A computer mouse is not a small animal that lives in buildings and open fields. It is a small device (装置) that you move around on a flat surface in front of a computer.The mouse moves the cursor (光标) on the computer screen.

    Computer expert Douglas Engelbart developed the idea for the mouse in the early nineteen-sixties. The first computer mouse was a carved block of wood with two metal wheels. It was called a mouse because it had a tail at one end. The tail was the wire that connected it to the computer.

    Using a computer takes some training. People who are experts are sometimes called hackers. A hacker is usually a person who writes software programs in a special computer language. But the word" hacker" is also used to describe a person who tries to steal information from computer systems.

    Another well known computer word is Google. It is the name of a popular search engine for the Internet.People use the search engine to find information about almost any subject on the Internet. The people whostarted the company named it Google because in mathematics, googol, spelled g-o-o-g-o-l,is an extremely

    large number. It is the number one followed by one hundred zeros.

    When you "Google" a subject, you can get a large amount of information about it. Some people like to Google their friends or themselves to see how many times their name appears on the Internet. If you Google someone, you might find that persons name on a blog. A blog is the shortened name for a Web log. A blog is a personal Web page. It may contain stories, comments, pictures and links to other websites. Some people add information to their blogs every day. People who have blogs are called bloggers.

    One of the hottest places on Earth is Death Valley. It's a desert valley in North America. The animals in Death Valley don't use technology to keep cool. They have special abilities that help them live there.

    During the day in Death Valley, it gets hotter than 100°F. The kangaroo rat rests all day in a hole in the ground. It covers the hole with grass to keep out the heat. The kangaroo rat comes out at night when it is cooler. This little rat is also very good at saving water. It gets all the water it needs from the food it eats. The Sun makes the desert sand very hot. One snake, called the sidewinder, can solve this problem. When it travels, the sidewinder bends (弯曲) its body into a "W" shape. Then it uses the bottom parts of the "W" like legs and walks sideways (向一侧). That way it touches only a little of the sand at a time, so the hot sand doesn't bum the snake. This strange way of moving is how the sidewinder got its name.

    A lot of water in the desert is too salty for most animals to drink. One kind of fish, the desert pupfish, can live in these salty water because it can drink the salt water.

    Possible Earth-Like Planet Next Door?

    Scientists say they discovered an earth-like planet outside our solar system (太阳系). It is a planet that could support life.

    This planet is just 4.2 light years away from us. It is so close that space scientists have considered it as a next door neighbor. They say it could be reached by an unmanned spaceship before the end of the century -- in time for people alive today to see it.

    An international team of scientists found the planet moving around the star called "Proxima Centauri". The result came out last month from the scientific magazine Nature.

    Scientists have long thought that a planet with water is important for life. And it has to be neither too hot nor too cold. The newly-discovered planet is a little larger than earth Scientists have named it Proxima B. It moves around its sun, Proxima Centauri, once every 11 days.

    American scientists have been using instruments for years to look for earth-like planets. In 2013, scientists' best guess was that there are about one billion (1,000 million) "earths" in space.

    Alan Boss is the chairman of a group for outer space research. He said that Proxima B not only confirms (确认) the discovery of a planet, but also increases the number of other possible“earths” greatly.

    Boss said it is possible, even likely, that most stars have at least one earth-like planet, which he considers surprising.

    So from the early number of a billion, this new research suggests there may be as many possible earth-like planets as there are stars in the Galaxy (银河系). That is, anywhere from 250 billion to 500 billion "earths".

    This makes the possibility of living things increasingly likely Boss said he believes human beings will be able to show that there is life in places besides earth in his lifetime. "I am 65," he said, "but I expect to still be alive when it happens."

    It's every parent's worst nightmare there's a fire in the house, the alarms are beeping, but the children are sleeping on. Now scientists have found a better way to rouse slumbering youngsters. Researchers in the US have discovered that playing a child a recording of his mother's voice is about three times more likely to wake him up than a traditional alarm.

    Writing in the Journal of Pediatrics, Smith and colleagues report how they compared the effects of four different smoke alarms on 176 children aged between 5 and 12 years old, none of whom had hearing difficulties or were taking any medication that affected their sleep. While one alarm featured a high-pitched beep the sort of commonly found in households the other three featured the voice of the child's mother calling either the child's name, giving instructions such as: "Wake up! Leave the room! ", or both. Each child slept in a lab-based room that resembled a real bedroom.

    The results show that vocal alarms appear to be more effective than high-pitched beeps. About 90% of children woke for a voice alarm compared with just over 53% for the traditional alarm.

    “High pitched beeping alarms don't wake up children well at all under about 12 years of age, "said Dr Gary Smith, a co-author of the research from the Nationwide Children's hospital in Ohio, although

he said at present it is not known why. He said it was important to look at developing better alarms.

    Prof Niamh Nic Daeid, director of the Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science at the University of Dundee, said the research found a human voice combined with a low-frequency pulsing tone was far more effective in waking up children than a traditional high-pitched alarm. She also noted that more work was needed to explore whether other familiar sounds, such as a dog barking, might also prove effective in rousing children.