Many animals do strange things before an earthquake. This news may be important. Earthquakes can kill people and knock down homes. The animals may help to save lives.

Some animals make a lot of noise before an earthquake. Farmers have told about this. Dogs that are usually quiet have started to bark(吠). Horses on farms have run around in circles. Mice have left their holes and run away. Cows have given less milk.

In a town in Italy, cats raced down the street in a group. That happened only a few hours before an earthquake. In San Francisco, a man kept tiny pet frogs. One Sunday, the frogs jumped around more than ever. They made loud noises, like bigger frogs. That night, an earthquake struck the city.

    People want to know when an earthquake is coming. Then they could get away safely. Right now, there is no sure way to know ahead of time. Maybe the best idea is watching the animals.

      Our living environment is being polluted faster than before and it seems nobody can prevent it. Time brings us more people, and more people bring us more industry, more cars, larger cities and growing use of man-made materials.

      How can we understand and solve this problem? The fact is that pollution is caused by man —by his desire (欲望）for a modem way of life. So we are often ready to offer everything: clean water, good food, our health and the future of our children. There are more people from the countryside moving into the cities and enjoying the modem society. But as the technological momentum (势头) has grown in the last twenty years, pollution has become a serious problem.

      Now we have to stop to ask ourselves where we are going and why. It makes one think of the story about the airline pilot who told his passengers over the loudspeaker, “I've got some good news and bad news. The good news is that we're going at 530 miles per hour. The bad news is that we're lost and don't know where we are going.” The sad fact is that this problem becomes a true story when speaking of our modem society.

    Do you know some great inventors and their inventions?

    What factors (因素) are needed for their success?

    Well, good timing for a start. You can have a great idea which the public simply doesn't want … yet. The Italian Giovanni Caselli invented the first fax（传真）machine in the 1860s. Although the quality is excellent, his invention quickly died a commercial(商业的) death. It was not until the 1980s that the fax became very common in every office… too late for Giovanni Caselli.

    Money also helps. The Frenchman Denis Papin (1647-1712) had the idea for a steam engine （蒸汽机）almost a hundred years before the better-remembered Scotsman James Watt was even born… but he never had enough money to build one.

    You also need to be patient (it took scientists nearly eighty years to develop a light bulb which actually worked)… but not too patient. In the 1870s, Elisha Gray, a professional inventor from Chicago, developed plans for a telephone. Gray saw it as no more than “a beautiful toy”. However, when he finally sent details of his invention to the Patent Office(专利局) in February，1876, it was too late. Almost the same invention had arrived two hours earlier and the young man who sent it , Alexander Graham Bell, will always be remembered as the inventor of the telephone.

    Of course what you really need is a great idea—but if you haven't got one, a walk in the country and a careful look at nature can help. The Swiss scientist, George de Mestral, had the idea for Velcro(魔术贴) when he found his clothes covered in sticky seed pods after a walk in the country. During a similar walk in the French countryside some 250 years earlier, Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur had the idea that paper could be made from wood when he found an abandoned wasps' nest(蜂巢).

    You also need good commercial sense. Willy Higinbotham was a scientist doing nuclear (核能的)research in the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, USA. In 1958 the public were invited to an exhibition in the Laboratory to see their work, but both parents and children were more interested in a tiny 120cm screen with a white dot which could be hit back and forth over a “net” using a button and a knob. Soon hundreds of people were ignoring the other exhibits to play the first ever computer game—made from a simple laboratory instrument called an “oscilloscope”. Higinbotham, however, never made money from his invention: he thought people were only interested in the game because the other exhibits were so boring!

    A small robot may help children who are ill in hospital or at home. These children may feel lonely without their friends or classmates. The robot takes their places at school. Through the robot, the children can hear their teachers and friends.

    The robot is called AV1. A Norwegian company called No Isolation created the robot. Dolva explains how the robot AV1 works. She says from home, children use a tablet or phone to start the robot. Then they use the same device to control the robot's movements. At school, the robot becomes their eyes, ears and voice.

     "So, it sits at the child's desk in the classroom and the child uses a tablet or a phone to start it and control its movements and talks through it. So it's the eyes, the ears and the voice at school." The robot is equipped with speakers, microphones and cameras that make communication easy.

    AV1 is large and looks like a human for a reason. Dolva says this is important because the robot is supposed to be a friend of the children. "It can't be just a tiny camera because the other kids can't pick it up and take it with them. This is supposed to be their friend." And robots are, quite simply, cool. Hopefully AV1 will help some children feel less lonely while they are not in class.