Tim Berners-Lee is not the most famous inventor in the world.However，his invention has changed our lives.

He was born in London，England in 1955.When he was a small boy，Tim was interested in playing with electrical things.He studied science at Oxford University.He made his first computer from an old television at the age of 21.

Tim started working on early computers.At that time，they were much bigger than now.He worked in England then Switzerland.Tim was really interested in two things，computers and how the brain works.How could the brain connect so many facts so quickly？He had to work with people all over the world.They shared information about computers.It was hard to manage all the information.He answered the same questions again and again.It took a lot of time.It was even difficult for computers in the same office in Switzerland to share information.Tim also forgot things easily.Could a computer work like a brain？Could it "talk" to other computers？

There was an Internet already but it was difficult to use.In 1989，Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web（WWW）all by himself.This had a special language that helped computers talk to each other on the Internet.When people wanted to share information with others，they used the World Wide Web.The Internet grew quickly after that.

Tim Berners-Lee doesn't think he did anything special.He says that all of the ideas about the Internet were already there.All he did was to put them together.He says that many other people worked together to make the Internet what it is today.

Most inventors want to become rich.But Tim gave away the World Wide Web for nothing.He now works in America.He helps people share technology and wants the Internet to be free for everyone to use.Maybe he is the most important but least famous inventor in the world today!

About 12% of the total global energy demand comes from heating and cooling homes and businesses. A new study suggests that using underground water to maintain comfortable temperatures could reduce consumption of natural gas and electricity in this section by 40% in the US. The approach is called ATES, short for aquifer thermal energy storage(含水层热能储存).

“We need storage to absorb energy from the sun and wind. It’s crucial to creating affordable, reliable, and deeply environmental-friendly electricity systems. Most people are interested in batteries and other kinds of electrical storage. But we were wondering whether there was any opportunity to use geothermal (地热的) energy storage,” said first author A. T. D Perera. “With ATES, energy can be stored for a long period of time, without adding an additional burden to the grid (输电网).”

ATES is a pleasantly simple concept that takes advantage of the heat-absorbing property of water and the natural geological features of the planet. You simply pull existing underground water up and heat it at the surface in the summer with environmental heat or energy. Then you send it back down. It stays fairly hot because the Earth is a good insulator (绝热体).

“Unlike above-ground tank-based water or ice storage systems, ATES will not need space. It’s also more efficient and can support larger communities in cooling or heating than traditional geothermal heat pump systems that rely on heat moving with the underground soil,” added coauthor Hong Tianzhen.

A major benefit of ATES is that it will become more efficient as weather becomes more extreme in the coming years due to climate change. The hotter summers and severer winters could increase the amount of free thermal energy that can be stored with ATES. “It’s very much a realistic thing to do and this work is really about showing its value,” said Perera. “This technology is ready to go, so to speak. We just need to do it.”

Whether in the home or the workplace, social robots are going to become a lot more common in the next few years. Social robots are about to bring technology to the everyday world in a more humanized way, said Cynthia Breazeal, chief scientist at the robot company Jibo.

While household robots today do the normal housework, social robots will be much more like companions than mere tools. For example, these robots will be able to distinguish when someone is happy or sad. This allows them to respond more appropriately to the user.

The Jibo robot, arranged to ship later this year, is designed to be a personalized assistant. You can talk to the robot, ask it questions, and make requests for it to perform different tasks. The robot doesn’ t just deliver general answers to questions; it responds based on what it learns about each individual in the household. It can do things such as reminding an elderly family member to take medicine or taking family photos.

Social robots are not just finding their way into the home. They have potential applications in everything from education to health care and are already finding their way into some of these spaces.

Fellow Robots is one company bringing social robots to the market. The company’ s “ Oshbot” robot is built to assist customers in a store, which can help the customers find items and help guide them to the product’ s location in the store. It can also speak different languages and make recommendations for different items based on what the customer is shopping for.

The more interaction the robot has with humans, the more it learns. But Oshbot, like other social robots, is not intended to replace workers, but to work alongside other employees. “ We have technologies to train social robots to do things not for us, but with us,” said Breazeal.