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.

阅读理解。根据短文内容，判断下列句子的正误。

        When we feel the ground moves suddenly, it means that an earthquake may come. Many of the earthquakes first come under the sea and then happen anywhere on the earth. Especially they often happen near the mountains and seas such as Wenchuan, Japan and Indonesia.

        When an earthquake happens, it's very easy to cause a tsunami (海啸). Houses fall down, many people are injured and even died.

        Now scientists are trying their best to study earthquakes. They make maps to show the “earthquake belts (地震带)”. So the houses there must be quite strong.

        We believe that scientists will be able to tell us when and where an earthquake will happen in the near future. Also, they can tell us what to do and how to do. People can even use earthquakes to do something for us humans.

    The expression "lanshouxianggu" has been quite popular on Chinese social networking sites. You may have used it many times when chatting online. However, did you know that the "blue thin mushroom" was not just magic of Photoshop and was really there in nature?

    Well, let' s meet Entoloma hochstetteri (霍氏粉褶菌).This is a kind of naturally-blue fungus(真菌) The plant looks very small. Its sten' s diameter(梗的直径) measures only about 5 millimeters. Entoloma hochstetteri can be found widely in New Zealand, especially on the west coast. The Maori name for it is "werewere-kokako." It seems New zealand is very proud of producing this unusual species-the country prints the blue mushroom on its $50 notes.

    Athough the species is very unusual, little is known about it. Silas villas-boas is a scientist at the University of Auckland. He said he was very disappointed that nobody had ever tried to test the blue mushroom in the lab, "You can even count the number of scientific articles on it on one hand, he said. The scientist decided to be the first to study the plant. A group of researchers have been helping him with the study.

    In an early test, the researchers found alkaloids(生物碱) and Omega-3 fatty acids(w-3脂肪酸)in the blue mushroom. While the acids are helpful to health, alkaloids soetimes influence how the brain works. However, Villas-Boas said the substance was very common in plants. So far, the researchers have not found any toxins(毒素) in Entoloma hochstetteri, but they are not yet sure if it can be eaten. Villas-Boas said more testing would be required.

    National parks are large areas of public land. They give a safe home to local plants and animals. They help keep the air and water clean. They also give us the best trips. Today, there are about 7,000 national parks around the world. Forbes has listed 12 of the most beautiful ones in the world that will surprise you with their amazing landscape, geographic wonders and colourful plants and animals.

    The Grand Canyon National Park of the US is one of the natural wonders of the world. It is best known for its size and depth. It is 446 kilometres long, up to 29 kilometres wide, and 1.6 kilometres deep. The immensity of the canyon makes people feel they are very small. Every year, about 5 million people visit here. Taking a tour in the South Rim offers visitors the park's full views, while the North Rim shows beautiful wild flowers

    If you love animals, you'll like the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. The "Big Five" live here. They are the lion. African elephant, African leopard, rhinoceros and African buffalo. The name "Big Five" came from the five animals that were the hardest to catch. Now they are what people most want to see in the wild. If you visit the park, you should never miss the migration (迁徙) of over 1.5 million wildebeest (牛羚) and 250,000 zebras every year. This is the most famous site of the park.

    A fish that lives in America can live out of water for months at a time, similar to how animals got used to land millions of years ago, a new study shows.

    The Mangrove Rivulets, a kind of little fish, lives in small pools of water. When their living place dries up, they live on the land, said Scott Taylor, a researcher in Florida.

    The fish can grow as large as three inches. They group together and breathe air through their skin before they can find water again.

    The new scientific discovery came during a trip.

    "We were travelling for fun. And one day I kicked over a log (圆木) and the fish came out." Taylor told reporters by telephone. He said he would make his study on the fish known to the public in an American magazine early next year.

    In lab tests, Taylor said he found the fish can live up to 66 days out of water without eating.

    Some other fish can live out of water for a short period of time. The walking catfish found in Southeast Asia can stay on land for hours at a time, while lungfish(肺鱼) found in Australia, Africa and South America can live out of water, but only in a not active(活跃的) way. But no other known fish can be out of water as long as the Mangrove Rivulets and keep active, according to Patricia Wright, a biologist at a Canadian University.

    More studies of the fish may tell how animals changed over time.

    "These animals live in conditions similar to those millions of years ago, when animals began to move from water onto land." Wright said.