Do you want to know what our life will be like in the future? Let's have a look. You may get a surprise.

    You will go to the kitchen when you are hungry. You will give orders to the kitchen robot. The robot will find a special food for you in a few minutes. Then it will bring it to you.

    In the kitchen you will find a special food machine. The food machine will tell you what your body needs. It will help you eat healthily. The food machine will be connected with (连接) the kitchen robot. The robot can get messages from the food machine.

    After having a meal, you can go to your home office. You will work at home and you don't need to go out to work anymore. You will have a special information screen. When you receive a message from a friend in America, your information screen will be turned on automatically(自动地). Your friend's face appears on the screen. Then you can talk to your friend easily.

    Here I want to tell you some informationabout water.

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

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

    All people need clean water. They need itfor drinking, for cooking, and for bathing. Some people in a village in SouthAmerica 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 theproblem. They sent empty water tanks (储水池) tothe village. Rainwater fell into the tanks. Now the people in that village havethe clean water.

A famous designer（设计师）and a university student produce a new cup called Vessyl. They have spent several years1it. The smart cup can not only tell Coca Cola from Pepsi Cola,2also tell people whether they should drink water or not.

When people3liquid（液体）into this smart cup, a few seconds（秒）later, it can check this kind of liquid and tell them what it is. Then it gives4information about the drink, such as sugar, fat and calories. When people put the cup in their5, it can also show them condition of their bodies. If they are6, Vessyl will tell them to drink water.

"My partner and I want people to7healthy. In modern society, people are usually8busy to do exercise, or even drink enough water every day. They have much9. We produce this smart cup so that people can make a choice10," the designer said.

David Gill might be the richest man in Sebastopol, California. The semi-retired health care officer is banking the most valuable currency (货币) in the world—TIME. Gill has 480 hours saved at the local time bank.

In brief, a time bank does with time what other banks do with money: It stores and trades it. "Time banking means that for every hour you give to your community, you receive an hour credit (积分)," explains Krista Wyatt, a director of the nonprofit TimeBanks. Org, which helps volunteers set up local time banks all over the world.

Nobody knows the exact number, but thousands of time banks with several hundred thousand members have been set up in at least 37 countries, including China, Malaysia, Japan, Senegal, Argentina, Brazil and in Europe, with over 3.2 million exchanges. There are probably more than 40,000 members in over 500 time banks in the US.

In Sebastopol, 250 local people have time bank accounts (账户) where they save and withdraw hours as needed. For example, Gill likes to offer his advice and help with computer programming, editing and financial (经济的) planning. In return, he asks for help when he needs a ride to the airport or someone to transport heavy furniture. The time banks are building social capital (资本). "I've made wonderful friends I wouldn't have met otherwise and we now invite each other to our garden parties," says Gill. "It's about making community and being a part of the community. You can't put a price on that."

David Gill came to the time bank like most of his neighbors. He doesn't remember where he first heard about it a few years ago, but he immediately thought it was a great idea. He signed up, started using it, and when the founders asked for help, he stepped up. He gets paid in the currency he values most: hours.

Time banks are a valuable resource for building social capital and supporting aging populations. They allow people to contribute to their community and receive help in return, creating a stronger, more connected society.

Eat like a king in the morning, a prince at noon, and a peasant at night. This saying is all about the importance of breakfast. And now scientists can tell us just why it's so important. According to a study carried out at Imperial College London, UK, skipping the first meal of the day not only means you eat mor eat lunch, but also that your brain wants to find more unhealthy foods.

The study suggests that there is a special part of our brain called the orbitofrontal cortex（眶额皮层），which plays an important part in making choices about what we eat. It is used for identifying the taste of food, especially when skipping breakfast. It is more likely to target high-calorie foods when you're on an empty stomach.

Scientists did an experiment on this. Dr Tony Goldstone from Imperial College London, scanned (Ff#) the brains of 21 men and women, around the age of 25. On the first day, these people skipped breakfast before the scans. On the second day, they had cereal（谷物）, bread and jam as breakfast. After the scan on both days, they had their lunch.

When the volunteers had skipped breakfast, they ate around 20 percent more at lunch, compared with days when they had eaten breakfast. Their brain scans also showed the orbitofrontal cortex was especially responsive to high-calorie foods. "We believe that bit identifies the value of foods - how pleasant, how delicious something is, " Goldstone told The Guardian.