Here I want to tell you some information about water.

    Water covers most of our planet. People can find it in oceans, lakes and rivers, and under the ground. Water moves in the environment by evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. The warm Sun helps water change into vapour and rise up into the sky. It is evaporation. The vapour in the air forms clouds in the sky. It is condensation. When the clouds get heavy enough, the water falls back to the ground as rain or snow. This is precipitation.

    Ocean water has too much salt in it. Much of the water travels far over the land. When it travels over the land, the water picks up salt from the rocks and soil. About 97.5% of the Earth's water is salty water. It is expensive to take salt out of the water.

    All people need clean water. They need it for drinking, for cooking, and for bathing. Some people in a village in South America did not have clean water. Their water was full of oil and dirty things. People there got sick when they drank the water. Other people heard about the problem. They sent empty water tanks (储水池) to the village. Rainwater fell into the tanks. Now the people in that village have the clean water.

    Imagine you are taking a walk on the beautiful beach. Just then, your feet step over something and you hear a crack (噼啪声) —an empty plastic bottle. Things like this are happening more often because of sea rubbish.

    Studies show that 80% of all the waste is from the land. The waste is mainly plastics (塑料制品) which are really hard to degrade (降解). So the rubbish will remain there for a long time. Some of the pollution is caused accidentally. For example, about 10,000 product-filled boxes are lost at sea every year from business ships. Sometimes people just throw things into the water from boats or land. Many large rubbish areas are formed in the North Pacific Ocean.

    Thankfully, the situation isn't ignored (忽视). Groups like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are taking action to help clean the sea. Since 2006,76 projects have cleared out 3,814 metric tons (公吨) of rubbish from the sea. Methods of rubbish cleaning include using machines to remove (移除) the waste away from the surface of sea water. Besides, special nets are set by the mouths of rivers to stop the rubbish before it reaches the sea. If everyone does his part, sea rubbish seems like a problem that can be solved.

    Americans think much about time. From childhood they learn to {#blank#}1{#/blank#} time. They are taught to be on time to go to school, to work and to do everything. When they are having a good time, they time goes easily. When a person is dying, they say he is living on borrowed time.

    Time is money. Time is knowledge. Time is {#blank#}2{#/blank#}in America. A working American has to work hard for eight hours a day or forty hours a week. This is the working time. In his free time, he also works hard for more money. Even on Saturday and Sunday he also works hard as {#blank#}3{#/blank#}. In the street you can hardly see a man walking{#blank#}4{#/blank#}. They walk very fast. In fact, they are running.

    They love time because time can bring them money and lots of things.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}sometimes they also hate time, because they feel they have become servants of the clock.

Life in the future will be different from life today. Many changes will happen. But what will the changes be?

The population (人口) is growing fast. There will be more people in the world and most of them will live longer than people live now. 

Computers will be much smaller and more useful, and there will be at least one in every home. And computer studies will be one of the important subjects in school then. People will work fewer hours than they do now and they will have more free time for sports, watching TV and travelling. Travelling will be much cheaper and easier. 

There will be changes in our food, too. More land will be used for building new towns and houses for all the people. Then there will be less room for cows and sheep, so meat will be more expensive. Maybe no one will eat it every day. Instead (相反), they will eat more fruit and vegetables. Maybe people will be healthier. Work in the future will be different, too. Robots will do dangerous and hard work. Because of this, many people will not have enough (足够的) work to do. This will be a problem. 

① Do you have a dog? What can your dog do for you? Do you know that dogs can read our feelings? Now some people find that dogs can smell (v.闻到; n.嗅觉) people's stress (压力).

②Dogs really are man's best friends. They have special smell. A new study said that dogs can smell if people are feeling stressed. Teachers at Queen's University, UK, made the study. They got breath(呼吸)and sweat(汗) from people both before and after doing a hard maths problem. They looked at the people's heart rate (心率), blood pressure (血压) and stress feeling in the study. Dogs can smell the difference in breath and sweat from people. Then they can know when people are stressed.

③The finding is wonderful: the dogs found stress in 675 of the 720 people. It could be 93.75% right! Australian News reported. The study's writer Clara Wilson said, "stress can change people's breath and sweat. Dogs are very good at smelling these changes." In the study, she also said, "this finding helps us learn that how dogs may know people's feelings."

④ This finding shows how special the bond is between people and dogs. The finding also tells us that dogs are very clever. And maybe dogs can help stressed people.