I’m glad to hear from you last week. Since you are interested in the continuous improvement of China’s environment, I’m writing to introduce it to you.

Yours,

Li Hua

In the near future, we will be living in smart homes, which will ensure our    1    (safe), save us energy and provide a more comfortable environment to live in.

In the smart homes,    2    (use) advanced technology daily for automatic control of everything will be common. Our future home will use integrated sensors to tell when we leave home and then go into an energy-efficient mode all by     3    (it).

We will find our dinner already    4    ( prepare) without turning switchs on and off ourselves. It is also amazing    5    all controls will respond to voice commands.

Smart homes can help to keep serious damage from    6    (accident). For instance, if a water pipe    7    (start) leaking, our smart home will detect it. In addition, they can help monitor our health. They can also warn us early on if we have a critical sickness and    8    (potential) save our lives.

This smart technology isn’t    9    daydream or fantasy any longer. Many new innovations have become a reality. Nevertheless, it will take a few years    10    most new homes start to use this new technology.

8 . Being able to tell human faces apart is a skill that almost every person has, although some are far better at it than others. But a new study from the journal Scientific Reports says that this is not just a skill that humans possess. Even fish can do it.

Following up on research studying different species’ abilities to recognize human faces (sheep, dogs, cows, horses, and birds have all been tried), the researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of Queensland decided to pick an animal that does not have an evolved neocortex (大脑新皮层), the part of the brain that processes sight and sounds, and does not have a close relationship with humans. That way, there would be no reason why these test subjects would have a past history of identifying human faces. So they picked the archerfish, a reef fish variety that shoots water into the air to knock its prey(猎物) out of the sky. They used this adaptation to have the fish spray water at a face on a monitor hanging over their tanks for a reward. Most of the fish were able to pick out their learned face, even when colours were taken away or methods were used to make the face shapes unclear.

This study gives more backing to the hypothesis (假设) that differentiating between faces is not just a skill that big-brained organisms are born with. It is possible that a good portion of recognizing faces is learned over time. The development of the neocortex may contribute only to quickly process a large number of faces in varying situations. But more work needs to be conducted to find a deeper link to this possible learned behaviour. The subject(实验对象) of this study was very small—only eight fish were used altogether. Also, the faces displayed on the monitor were only white, female faces from a German database, shown in a frontal view, with no expressions. Other animal trials have shown that some species, like pigeons, respond more to differing angles and varied expressions.

My mom is a housewife, and for as long I can remember, she has always been with me, never left me for a single day. However, my grandma was seriously ill last week and Mom had to leave for several days to looking after Grandma. It never occurred for me what my daily life would be like without Mom in the house. When she went back home after school, our home was a mess. With Dad always coming home later, I decided it was my turn to give the houses the look it ought to have. I clean the floor, the table and every corner. I miss Mom and now realize that her importance. Our home cannot function normal without Mom.