Grace, usually known as the Home of Microsoft, is inside an office building in Redmond, Washington. Once you come into the building, you will feel that you're in a modern and future home.

      When you enter the building, Grace's voice, coming from a hidden speaker, tells you your messages. In the kitchen, you set a bag of flour(面粉) on a flat stone table. Grace sees what you're doing and makes a menu of flour-based foods on the table. Once you choose one, Grace gives you ingredients(配料).

There's also a notice board in the kitchen made of “intelligent(智能的) cloth” that works like a touch screen computer. You can deal with postcards and invitations and surf the net with the touch of a finger. The invitations could be encoded(编码). You can deal with them on the computer. It's part of Microsoft's Smart Personal Objects Technology, whose aim is to make every object more efficient(有效率的).

      “The day when your house becomes a member of your family is not far,” says Pam Heath, a manager of Microsoft. At the Andersen Windows Company, Jay Libby imagines that windows made of intelligent glass can be changed into TVs.

      “Nobody wants a television set,” says Libby. “What you want is the service it provides.” If the TV isn't improved, it will disappear in the future.

Home entertainment is one consideration for the future. At the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, scientists are designing systems that will allow old people to live better on their own. So Grandma's home can be cleverly designed to recognize(识别) her ways of waking, sleeping and movement. Family members will be told any change by their computers.

    Honey(蜂蜜）from African(非洲）forest is very delicious.

    Most people and many animals like eating it. However, the only way for them to get that honey is to find a wild bees' nest(蜂巢）and take honey from it. Often, these nests are high up in trees, and it is difficult to find them. But in parts of Africa, people and animals have a strange helper — a little bird called a honey helper.

    In fact, the honey helper does not like honey, but it likes the wax(蜂蜡）in the nest. The little bird cannot reach the wax because it is inside the bees' nest. So, when it finds a nest, it looks for someone to help. The little bird sings loudly to get the attention(注意） of both passing animals and people. When it has their attention, it flies through the forest, waiting for the following animal or person that loves honey. Then it helps them find the nest. When they finally arrive at the nest, the follower tries to get the delicious honey and the bird waits and watches. Some of the honey and the wax always fall to the ground, and this is when the bird takes its share.

    Scientists do not know why the bird likes eating the wax, but they seem to be able to smell the wax far away.

    The computers changed our lives in the 1980s, the Internet changed our lives in the 1990s, and the robots will change our lives in the new century. Do you think there will be robots in people's homes? It's NOT a dream that every home will have a robot.

    Now, robots are not only able to help people do the housework, but also able to help the doctors do the difficult operations, play chess with people, play the piano and so on.

    A new cooking robot is used in Beijing. It can cook all the dishes on the menu, and you only need to wait two to four minutes.  In the future, the robot will be a nurse, a security guard, or a partner in your life.

    Experts believe robots will be used everywhere, from the industrial robots to service robots. In the future, robots will become part of the family, and provide close service for people. We all look forward to the new robot age.

    If you have your own Acme Rocket Launcher, you can create and send up rockets that show off your personality and creativity.

    All you need is your Acme Rocket Launcher and a few simple household materials:

    ★a 500ml plastic cola bottle     ★scissors     ★colored markers

    ★poster board     ★glue

What to do:

Step 1     Clean the cola bottle completely and allow it to dry.

Step 2     Use markers to draw three small triangles (三角形) and one large triangle on the poster board. Cut out the triangles.

Step 3     Roll (卷起) the large triangle so that two of its sides touch and it forms a rocket's nose cone. Glue the sides of the cone so that it holds its shape.

Step 4     Glue the nose cone to the bottom of the bottle to make the top of the rocket.

Step 5     Glue the smaller triangles to the other end of the cola bottle, around its opening. The triangles will be the tail fins.

    Follow the launching instructions included with your Acme Rocket Launcher and have a blast!

    This week is Computer Science Education Week. During the week, students around the world will be taking part in an "Hour of Code" and learning a little about programming computers. This year, there will be more than 200.000 events in over 180 countries.

    The U.S. Congress first created Computer Science Education Week in 2009 to remember Grace Hopper, one of the women who played an important part in the early days of computers.

    Hadi Partovi came up with the idea of the Hour of Code. He thinks coding is an important skill and that it's important for schools to teach computer science. He started the Hour of Code in 2013 because he was worried that computer science was not a big part of what schools taught in most states.

    To spread his idea, he got the help from many famous people. Some were famous for working with computers, like Bill Gates. Others were famous in other areas. Mr. Partovi got a lot of money for his idea from big companies like Facebook. Google, and Microsoft.

    Students who take part in the Hour of Code complete a short coding challenge that is broken down into small, simple steps. The challenge is supposed to take about an hour in all.

    To raise the interest of students, the challenges are often tied in with popular movies or games. For example, challenges have been built around Angry Birds. Mine Craft. Frozen. and Star Wars—One test of the program's success is whether students keep going once the time is up. It turns out that many of them do. Last year, teachers reported that 92% of their students coded for more than an hour.