What if you arrived home to find it delicious hot meal waiting for you, prepared by your very own kitchen robot? It might sound like science fiction. but professors at the university of Tokyo  have  taken  the first steps toward making that  scenario a reality. The team recently introduced a humanoid kitchen robot that can pour and other drinks into cups and serve the m to guests. When teating is over, the robot can also wash the dishes and put them away.

    In California, another interesting kitchen robot has been developed, called Readybot. It can pick up objects and either store them in  cabinets (橱柜）or put them in the trash. It also carries a separate floor-cleaning robot that can operate by itself. Unlike the Japanese robot, Readybot just looks more like a large box with arms and wheels.

    Readybot was created by engineers and designers who established a club called the Readybot  Challlenge. They believe that in the future millions of robots will be needed in homes to perform ordinary household tasks. Readybot is just the first step in their plan to create a robot that can do jobs not  only  in  kitchens but  in other rooms of homes and in offices as well.

    Clearly there are technological difficulties to solve before robots can cook a Complete dinner, and there arc also many safety concerns (忧虑） .Not everyone (especially parents) would be comfortable with the idea of robots in their house, manipulating hot pans and sharp knives. The European Commission recently funded(资助） a project to study these concerns. According to lead researcher Professor Chris Melhuish,“ Enabling  robots to work  safely with humans is a key need for the future development of robotics.”

    Glacier Bay is one of the most famous parks in America, located in the state of Alaska. This park in the southeastern part of the state covers more than 1 million hectares of Alaskan wilderness. It includes mountains, glaciers (冰川), bays, and even rainforests. Glacier Bay supports hundreds of kinds of animals, including many species of birds, fish, bears, whales and sea lions.

    As its name suggests, much of Glacier Bay National Park is covered by glaciers. A glacier is a large area of ice that moves slowly down a slope (斜坡) or valley, or over a wide area of land. Glaciers cover more than 5,000 square kilometers of the park.

    Glacial ice has shaped the land over the last seven million years. The glaciers found in the park today are what remains from an ice advance known as the Little Ice Age. That period began about 4,000 years ago.

    During the Little Ice Age, the cold weather caused the ice to grow and advance. That situation continued until about 1,700s, when the climate began to warm. The higher temperatures caused the ice to start melting. That melting led the huge glacier to separate into more than 1,000 different glaciers.

    The extremely tall and jagged (参差不齐的) mountains seen in Glacier Bay National Park were formed by the ice advancing and then melting over time. The melting of the ice also created water that filled in and created the many fjords (峡湾) within the park. Fjords are narrow parts of the ocean that sit between cliffs or mountains.

    The huge amount of water from the melted ice killed off many kinds of plants. Vegetation returned to the area over the next 200 years. The regrowth in plants also brought back many animals to the land. This return of life to Glacier Bay is why it is sometimes called “a land reborn” by people.

    Adults are happy to tell their children that crusts (面包皮) will give them curly hair, carrots will help them see in the dark, and spinach will make them strong. Even though adults know it's not totally true, they think it's good for their children's health, a study had found.

    In a study about 31 per cent of adults said they once told their children the curly hair tale, and 36 per cent said they'd been told the same thing by their mother or father. Among the over-50s, almost half said they'd been promised curly hair if they ate their crusts. A quarter of the 2,000 adults questioned in the study told their children carrots would help them see in the dark. This could be true to some extent because of the high levels of vitamin A and beta-carotene in root vegetables.

    Another favorite among parents is that milk will make one strong. A third surveyed said their parents told them this, and about 29 per cent said they told their children the same thing. But while there is plenty of evidence to suggest milk is good for people's health, there are also a lot of scientific papers saying it isn't.

    Thanks to Popeye, spinach is also fed to children, along with the idea that it will make them strong. While there is also some truth in this one, scientists now believe it is not the iron, but the inorganic nitrates (无机硝酸盐) that improve physical power.

    One in seven of the surveyed admitted telling their little ones that runner beans will make them run faster, which is nothing more than wordplay and has no basis in science. Almost one in five adults were subjected to the same tale in childhood.

    Just over one in 10 parents told their children green food would turn them into a superhero, and a quarter admitted hiding vegetables in meals.

    Lyndsay Jones, spokesman for Persil Washing Up Liquid, said, "It's clear that the most persuasive stories about food are passed on from generation to generation. Our research shows that the ideas continue, and we tell our kids the same things our parents told us, even if they're not always entirely true."

    Crusts may not make your hair curly, but there's plenty of research that says crusts contain more of the goodness than the rest of a loaf. Hopefully, as a result of our Cook with Kids promise, more parents will be encouraged to spend time with their children in the kitchen and teach them the truth about food.

A handsome middle-aged man walked quietly into the cafe and sat down. Before he ordered, he couldn't help but noticed a group of younger men at the table next to him. It was obvious they were making fun of something about him and it wasn't until he remembered he was wearing a small pink ribbon (丝带) on the lapel (翻领) of his suit that he became aware of what the joke was all about.

    The man pretended not to notice it, but the whisper and laughter began to get to him. He looked one of the rude young men straight into the eye, placed his hand beneath (在…下方) the ribbon and asked, “This?”

    With that the young men all began to laugh out loud. The man he spoke to said, “Hey, sorry, man, but we were just commenting on how pretty your little pink ribbon looks against your blue jacket!”

The middle-aged man calmly invited the joker to come over to his table, and politely seated him. As uncomfortable as he was, the young guy had to, not really sure why. In a soft voice, the middle-aged man said, “I wear this ribbon to bring awareness about breast cancer. I wear it in my mother's honor.”

     “Oh, sorry. She died of breast cancer?”

“No, she didn't. She's alive and well. But her breasts nourished (抚养，滋养) me as a baby, and were a soft resting place for my head when I was scared or lonely as a little boy. I'm very grateful for my mother's breasts, and her health.”

     “Umm,” the young replied, “yeah.”

     “And I wear this ribbon to honor my wife,” the man continued.

“And she's okay, too?” the young guy asked.

“Oh, yes. She's fine. Her breasts have been a great source of loving pleasure for both of us, and with them she nurtured (养育，培育) and nourished our daughter 23 years ago. I'm grateful for my wife's breasts, and her health.”

     “Uh, huh. And I guess you wear it to honor your daughter, also?”

“No. It's too late to honor my daughter by wearing it now……”

Shaken and ashamed, the young guy said, “Oh, I'm so sorry, mister.”

“So, in my daughter's memory, too, I proudly wear this little ribbon, which allows mo the opportunity to enlighten (启发，教导) others. And here…” With this, he reached in his pocket and handed the young roan a little pink ribbon. The young guy looked at it, slowly raised his head and asked, “……?”

    One morning while Officer Vogel was on his coffee break in a restaurant, a man ran in a yelled. “Officer! A little kid is driving a car down the street!"

    He ran out at once and saw a cargoing slowly--about 25 miles an hour--but it wasn't going very straight. He jumped into his police car and followed it. When the car was stopped, Officer Vogel looked inside. The driver was a little boy. His name was Rocco Morabiro and he was 5. In the back seat was his two-year-old sister. Both children were crying.

    "I want my mummy!" the boy cried. "But she can't get here. I have the car.” Then he had an idea. "Just a minute." he told Officer Vogel. "I can drive. I'll go to get her.”

    “No!" Officer Vogel said. “You stay with me!" Then he drove them to the police station and he called their mother. They had many questions for Rocco. The first question was: "Where did you get the car keys?"

    Rocco said. “From the top of the refrigerator." At seven that morning Rocco's father was at work and his mother was sleeping, Rocco saw the keys on top of the refrigerator. He climbed up on a chair, and took the keys.

    Rocco got into the car and started the engine. When Rocco's sister heard the engine, she ran to the car and cried. She wanted to go with him.

It was 7 a. m.—rush hour—so there was much traffic. Rocco drove one mile in heavy traffic. Then Officer Vogel stopped him.

    Newspapers and TV stations heard about Rocco, and a lot of reporters went to his house. One reporter asked Rocco, “What do you want to be when you grow up?"

    “A truck driver," he said, smiling.

    It is a question people have been asking for ages—is there a way to turn back the aging process?

    For centuries, people have been looking for a "fountain of youth." The idea is that if you find a magical fountain, and drink from its waters, you will not become old. Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León searched for waters with magical powers in the early 1500s. But what he found instead is the American State of Florida.

    Researchers in New York did not find a fountain of youth in fact, but they may have found a way to turn back the aging process. It appears the answer may be hidden right between your eyes, in an area called the hypothalamus (丘脑下部).The hypothalamus is part of your brain. It controls important activities within the body, including growth, reproduction and the way we process food.

    Researchers at New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine found that hypothalamus stem cells also influence how fast aging takes place in the body. What are stem cells? They are simple cells that can develop into specialized cells, like blood or skin cells. Stem cells can also repair damaged parts in the body.

    Professor Dongsheng Cai was the lead researcher in a study on aging in mice. Cai explains in the Journal Nature what they found. "Aging speed can be controlled by a particular place in the body, which is the hypothalamus. And it can be controlled by a particular type of cells, which are hypothalamus stem cells. I think these findings are quite interesting."

    He adds that when the hypothalamus starts aging, so does the body. "So when hypothalamus function is decreasing, particularly the loss of hypothalamus stem cells, this protection against the aging development is lost. It finally leads to aging."

    Using this information, the researchers began trying to activate (激活) the hypothalamus in mice. They did this by putting stem cells from younger mice into middle-aged animals. Later, the researchers examined mice and tested for changes in behavior. They also looked for changes in the strength of the animals' muscles and the way they worked. The researchers say the results show that the treatment slowed aging in the animals.

    Cai says when hypothalamus stem cells, which were derived from young mice was put into middle-aged mice, the mice aged slowly and they also have increased the length of their lives.

    But these results were just from studying mice in a lab. If the mice can live longer, does that mean people could have longer lives? The next step is to see if the anti-aging effects also work in human beings.