You probably know many of the things that you can do with the hundreds of different muscles in your body. But have you ever thought about how the muscles in an animal's body are different from yours? An animal's muscles are made to do the things that are most important for its life.

    Lions are hunters. They depend on their ability to catch other animals. Lions must be fast in order to catch their prey(猎物). The powerful muscles in their back legs allow them to run at speeds of more than 30 miles per hour. They can also jump a distance of more than 35 feet. The strong muscles in their front legs help them catch their prey.

    Snakes also use their muscles for hunting prey and for movement, but their muscles work in very different ways than lions' do. Because snakes do not have any legs, they use their muscles to push against the ground or other objects to move themselves forward. Their muscles also allow them to eat things that seem much too large. For example, a snake may eat an egg that is larger than the width of its body. How does this happen? The snake's strong neck muscles work together to push the egg down the mouth.

    The elephant's long nose has a lot of muscles. Scientists believe that the nose alone has more than 100,000 muscles! This is because the elephant uses its nose much in the same way that people use their hands and fingers. Even though the nose is large, it can perform surprisingly tasks. For example, an elephant can pick up a small leaf from the ground. The nose can also be a powerful tool. An elephant can use its nose to pick up a tree by its roots or even to lift a baby elephant.

    The great muscles of these animals seem pretty unbelievable. But the muscles in your body work exactly the way you need them to. After all, it might be fun to be able to jump a distance of 30 feet, but as a human being, there is just not much need for it.

    Three powerful ocean storms hit the Caribbean, the coast of the southeastern United States and southeastern Mexico. They come as the state of Texas recovers from Hurricane Harvey (飓风哈维). The huge storm caused serious flooding and billions of dollars in damage in Houston, the country's fourth-largest city.

    Hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean goes from June 1 to November 30. And most storm activities happen in me month of September.

    Hurricanes are the most powerful storms in the Earth's atmosphere. The storms have different names depending on where they take place. Scientists call all these storm tropical cyclones (热带气旋).

    If the storms form over the Atlantic Ocean or eastern Pacific Ocean, they are called hurricanes. Storms that form in the western Pacific Ocean are known as typhoons. In the Indian Ocean, they are called cyclones. Although they have different names, all these storms form in the same way.

    Scientists at the American space agency NASA describe tropical cyclones as huge weather "engines" that use warm, moist (潮湿的) air as fuel.

    They can only form over warm, tropical waters near the equator (赤道).

    A tropical cyclone develops when warm moist air near the surface of me ocean rises. This creates an area of unusually low air pressure.

    Higher-pressure air from surrounding areas pushes in to take the place of the warm, rising air. It becomes warmer and moister and rises, too.

    The rising, moist air goes high into the atmosphere, where temperatures are low. This creates wind. The moisture forms clouds. The developing weather system begins to spin because of the Earth's rotation (旋转).

    As the storm spins faster and faster, an "eye" of the storm develops at its centre. This is a calm area of very low pressure. Higher pressure air from above flows down into the eye.

    For thousands of years, humans have explored(探索)the Earth. Nowadays, we are exploring space. Astronomers (天文学家) are the modern﹣day explorers, Now, many astronomers are looking for new planets and new places for humans to live in the future. But where do astronomers start looking？

    First of all, astronomers look for a star. That's because our own Earth moves around a star (the Sun). More importantly, it is the correct distance( 距离) from the Sun for heat and light. So when astronomers have found the star, they look at the planets around it. In recent years, astronomers have found nearly 400 new planets with stars. However, many of these planets are either too near to the star or too far away.

    However, if the planet is in a good position, astronomers look for three key things: water, air and rock. Water is important because all life needs water. Humans can drink it and they can also grow plants with water. And plants produce air for humans to breathe and food to eat. Rock on a planet is also important. That's because there is often water under the rock.

    After many years of scrutinizing, astronomers have found a planet that is similar to the Earth. It's Gliese 581g and it's near a star. The astronomers think it has water and rock and the average(平均的) temperature is between -31℃ and -12℃.That's cold, but not colder than Antarctica or the Arctic Circle, for example. Gliese 581g is bigger than the Earth. A year on Gliese 581g is only 37 Earth days instead of 365. But astronomers do not think these are big differences and some of them think Gliese 581g will be a new Earth. However, Gliese 58Ig is twenty light years from the Earth.

    If you look at the top of your phone, you'll usually see a lite symbol that says 3G or 4G. The "G" is the generation(代)" of your mobile network (移动网络). But these symbols will become things of the past after 5G networks fully arrive.

    On March 30, 2019, Shanghai vice mayor (副市长) Wu Qing made the first SG video call on a Huawei Mate x smartphone, CGTN reported. Shanghai has also become the first city in China to start testing 5G networks.

    About 100 times faster than 4G networks, 5G will let people download (下载) and upload data (数据) faster than ever before. But 5G won't just bring faster mobile internet. People can use it for many other things as well.

    For example, 5G will help to make self-driving cars safer. Today's self-driving test cars have one problem-lag (延迟). When the car "sees" an obstacle (障碍物), it sends this information to a data center and receives instructions (指令).

    However, it takes time to send and receive this information. With this kind of lag, the cars might hit each other because they don't receive instructions in time. With 5G, this lag will be greatly lowered (降低), making the cars safer, according to CNN. 5G could also be used to help the internet of things (IoT,物联网). IoT is a large online network that connects all things and people. Fast internet speed will be the key to developing this technology. The IoT could be used in a lot of ways. For example, with IoT, your refrigerator could automatically (自动地) place an order online for eggs when it finds that there are no eggs left inside.

    We all cry for water when we are thirsty. But do you know, in very hot, dry weather, plants also make very low sounds as if they are crying for help?

    You see, in a plant's stem there are several hundred "water pipes" that bring water from soil all the way up to the leaves. When the ground turns dry, it becomes harder and harder for plants to do this.

    In very hot days, plants have to get any water that they can get.

    Scientists Robot Winter has found out that when plants can get no water, their "water pipes" snap(发出声音). When that happens, the whole plant vibrates(颤动) a little.

    Robot knows that healthy, well-watered plants are quiet. He also knows that dry plants are many insects' favorites and they often attack(袭击) them. How do the insects know which are healthy plants and which are not? Robot thinks that the insects may hear the plants "crying" and they may come to kill them.

    We always think that it's OK for us to leave our plants home during our vacation as plants won't scream like pets, right?

    A recent study done by a group of scientists at the Tel Aviv University has discovered that some plants will scream when they are under stress.

    The research was carried out on tomato plants and tobacco plants by cutting their stems (茎) and depriving (剥夺) them of water. A microphone was placed 10cm away from them. When their stems were cut, the plants started "screaming" between 20 and 100 kilohertz, and the scientists guess that this scream is probably meant to warn other plants nearby.

    When the tomato plants' stems were cut, 25 ultrasonic (超声的) pain sounds were recorded in an hour, and at the same time, 15 ultrasonic pain sounds were recorded from the tobacco plants. When they were deprived of water, the tomato plants recorded even more pain sounds with 35 pain sounds in an hour while the tobacco plants recorded about 11 pain sounds.

    The plants also acted differently to different kinds of stresses. For example, the tobacco plants gave out a stronger "scream" when they were deprived of water than when their stems were cut. But plants that were in no immediate (立刻的) danger gave out less than one ultrasonic sound per hour.

    The group of scientists said that plants are not as quiet as we had always thought, but in fact their voices are so high-pitched that we just can't hear them.

    Last year, another study has found out that plants feel pain when they are touched or hurt and they will give off a terrible smell.