Is your TV connected to the Internet? What about your chair, or your fridge? Probably they are not. But in the future, most things in your home may be connected, thanks to the so-called “Internet of things”.

    The Internet of things may be coming sooner than you think. Earlier this year, Samsung CEO spent a lot of time talking about the Internet things. He said that four years from now, every Samsung product will be part of the Internet of things, no matter whether it's a remote control or a washing machine.

    So, how do household objects that are part of the Internet of things work? Well, think of a common chair. When connected to the Internet, the chair warms up when it knows the user has just walked into the room and is feeling cold.

    An Internet-connected camera could help people feel safer in their homes. It can know people's faces and has an infrared sensor（红外传感器), so even if it's dark it can see when someone passes by and send you a message on your smartphone to let you know who's there. If the person is someone you don't know, it can tell you that, too.

    But according to MIT Technology Review, whether companies are connecting dog food bowls or security（安全）systems to the Internet, there may be some problems. For example, many early connected-home objects don't have much built-in security, which means they could be hacked. Moreover, it could be difficult to get these new machines to work together especially when they are made by different companies. To fight this, many companies have joined the Open Interconnect Consortium, which had 45 members by late 2015.

    So, picture this: you enter your home.The temperature changes to make you feel comfortable. Your favorite music starts playing for you. Do you think that this would be a good thing? It may happen sooner than you think.

    Thousands of years ago. in the south of ancient China, there lived Shennong, a man who had an ox(牛) head and human body. Seeing that local people were suffering from disease, he built ladders and houses on a high mountain to store hundreds of medical plants. To remember him, people named the place Shennongjia.

    The legend(传说) makes Shennongjia in Hubei an inviting place for tourists. Travelling there is a unique experience, as you can see sceneries of the four seasons from different altitudes. “When the bottom of the mountain is summer, the top is spring and while the foothill is autumn, the top is covered with ice," local people say of the special climate of Shennongjia.

    Shennongjia is also home to 5, 000 species of animals and plants. Many animals in danger live there, such as the golden monkey, the clouded leopard and the Asian black bear.

    One interesting and mysterious thing about Shennongjia is its legend of wild men. Some people once claimed that they saw big footprints or big-foot creatures. Yet so far, scientists haven't proved it is true and some say they are just bears.

    The beautiful place has recently received a new title. On July 17, 2016, Shennongjia Forestry District was added to United Nations World Heritage list as a natural site. China now has 52 world heritage sites(遗址)，second only to Italy in the world.

    Everyone knows the strange feeling of your fingers wrinkling up (起皱) when they're wet. Sometimes when in water, it seems as if your hands have aged 30 years in a second. But is this an accident? Or is it something that nature has built into our bodies?

    Scientists at the University of Newcastle in the UK recently did a test. They asked people to pick up things (some wet and some dry). And take them from one place to another. Some people did this with dry hands, while others had to leave their hands in water for 30 minutes first so that their skin was wrinkled. The study found the second group with wet hands had an advantage when carrying things that were also wet.

    The scientist Tom Smulders said that "this wrinkling of our fingers in wet conditions could have helped with gathering food from wet vegetation or streams". Wrinkling happens when blood vessels contract (血管收缩) and pull the skin back.

    A long time ago, humans lived a very difficult life in a brutal world, where the smallest advantage could make a huge difference. Having wrinkled skin might have helped people catch fish. This would help them get through the winter. These humans would then have had an advantage. Their genes would be accepted by natural selection.

    There are lots of objects that we see in the sky. During the day we see the sun. After the sunset in the evening, we see mostly the stars. Not all the lights in the sky that we see are really stars.

    Of course, we see the moon. Some of the other lights in the sky are planets. Planets revolve (转动) around the sun like earth does.

    Once in a while someone will see what they call a shooting star.

    Shooting star looks like a star that is moving quickly across the sky. Some people believe that seeing a shooting star will bring them good luck. It's hard to find shooting star because they disappear fast.

    The correct name for a shooting star is meteor. Besides very large objects like stars, planets and moons, space has lots of little objects. These can be rocks in space left over from old planets.

    These objects can even be as small as dust. These objects are called meteorites(陨石).

    When a meteorite gets close to the earth, it gets pulled towards the earth by gravity. Earth is surrounded by atmosphere. Atmosphere is made up of air and clouds. A meteorite blows up in the earth's atmosphere. This makes the short bright moving light in the night sky. A meteorite thus turns into a meteor.