A smart home is a home with a communication network. This network connects devices(装置), such as lights and TV sets, and allows them to be controlled from far away through electrical wiring, mobile phone communication or WiFi over the internet.

    More and more people may start to consider owning a smart home, because it makes life much more convenient. It can help keep your room at a certain temperature. It can record what happens inside the home and send the video to your phone. When you are on vacation abroad, you can use a smart home controller to switch on or off the electricity when necessary. Some smart homes can receive a visitor, allowing him to come in and offering him a drink. They can even feed the cat and water the plants.

    Besides, smart homes are easy to fix. Most smart home technology and devices are wireless and can be set up with a minimum of tools,using only the guiding information. When a problem appears,you can deal with it yourself without paying a professional.

    However, for home-users,the smart home technology is far from perfect.It can be rather expensive to own the technology and the devices. Also, because the smart home system(系统) allow its owner to get home information from anywhere, it leaves the home easy to be attacked by hackers(黑客), who may secretly use or change the information in the system.

Now,many scientists are excited at the future of smart home technology. Imagine being able to get fashion advice from your mirror, or receive food shopping suggestions from your refrigerator. While there are others who worry that those smart devices will make people lazier and lonelier. Whatever it is, one thing is for sure—smart home technology will change the way we live and work.

      Our sun is a star, and nine worlds (天体) move round it. Worlds like these are planets. But here are other stars, other suns, not only thousands of them, but millions of them. Do different stars have planets? We can see the planets round our own sun. But we haven't been anymore. The stars are too far away from us. Stars give out light, but the planets don't have any light of their own. So we can't see them. They are too far, and too dark. Still, we can tell that some stars have planets. While a big planet goes round, it pulls its star to one side. And sometimes we can see this. Then we know that the star has a planet. For example, Barnard's Star is a small red star. And it is the quickest star in the universe. But sometimes it moves slower, and then quicker again. We have known Bernard''s Star for many years, and now we are sure it has a planet.

    We know the mosquito very well. Mosquitoes fly everywhere. They can be found almost all over the world, and there are more, than 2, 500 kinds of them.

No one likes the mosquito. But the mosquito may decide that she loves you. She? Yes, she. It's true that male mosquito doesn't bite and only the female mosquito bites because she needs blood to lay eggs. She is always looking for things or people she wants to bite. If she likes what she finds, she bites. But if she doesn't like your blood, she will turn to someone else for more delicious blood. Next time a mosquito bites you, just remember you are chosen. You're different from the others!

    If the mosquito likes you, she lands on your body without letting you know. She bites you so quickly and quietly that you may not feel anything different. After she bites, you will have an itch(痒) on your body because she puts something from her mouth together with your blood. By the time the itching begins, and she has flown away.

And then what happens? Well, after her delicious dinner, the mosquito feels tired. She just wants to find a place to have a good rest. There, on a leaf or a wall, she begins to lay eggs, hundreds of eggs.

    Clean water is not only important for people to produce food, but necessary for our life However, many people in Asia and Africa don't have enough clean water to use The World Health Organization reports that almost 4 000 children die each day of dirty water or lack(缺乏)of water.

    Farmers use 70% - 85% 0f the world freshwater to produce food. People usually don't pay much attention to how much water industry(工业)uses, but you may be surprised to know that industry uses 59% of the water in developed countries.

    Home use takes up（占据）only 8% in the world. But as cities grow, more water will be used. The local government has to try to make people useless water. In 60% of European cities, people are saving water by using less. They even keep waste water for other use. In Australia, the government has encouraged people to collect rainwater and recycle water from showers for a second use, The US Environmental Protection Agency has made a water saving program to encourage families and businesses to check their water use and save more water. Scientists and the UN are looking for good water management as the key to solving the problem. We can all work together to protect our fresh water in our daily life.

    Some Fun and Interesting Facts

    Do you think what color oranges are? The common answer to this question is "Orange". However, the first oranges from Southeast Asia were actually green. Up to now, oranges in warmer areas like Vietnam and Thailand still stay green when they are fully grown.

    There was a man named John Chapman who planted thousands of apple trees. But the apples on those trees were much more bitter(哭的) than the ones you'd find in the supermarket today. John didn't expect has apples to be eaten whole, but rather made hard apple cider(苹果酒).

    Like most four-legged animals, cats have five toes on the front paws, but their back paws only have four toes. Scientists think they four-toe back paws might help them run faster. Do you know any other fun fact about cats?

    Walt Disney might have been the firs it gloves on his characters，as the star Mickey Mouse in 1929's The Opry House（《奥普里之屋》）.Besides being easier to interest, there's another reason why Disney did so "We didn't want him to have mouse hands because he was supposed to be more human." Disney once said.