Football is one of the most popular and oldest sports in the world. The ancient Chinese and Mexicans played a similar game thousands of years ago. The biggest event for football is the World Cup. It is for football teams from all over the world.

The finals (决赛) of the World Cup take place every four years. In between, national teams from all continents play matches to try and win places in the next World Cup.

Brazil is the most successful World Cup country. It has won the tournament (联赛) four times in the last 100 years. Brazil is also the only country that has played in all the final tournaments. For the 2006 World Cup in Germany, over 800 qualifying matches (资格赛) were played, and 32 teams made it through to the final round.

In 2002, the World Cup finals took place in Japan and South Korea. The matches were played in all over both countries, in 10 different stadiums. Brazil beat Germany in the final and won the tournament for the fifth time.

The first World Cup for women was held in 1991. The United States beat China and won the final. More than 70 countries took part in the qualifying matches.

Ants (蚂蚁) are kind of like humans, because they live in big “ant cities”. In the ant cities, thousands of ants work together to build homes, find food and so on. Each ant city has a queen, and she mainly lays (产) eggs. In these ant cities, there are special rooms for keeping food and taking care of baby ants. Some ants have to pick up all the rubbish from the city and bring it outside the city. Do you think all that rubbish might be too much for a little ant? Even though they are so small, ants can carry some heavy things.

The door to their underground world is what we call an “anthill (蚁丘)”. The anthill is made up of sand and dirt. In the middle is a little hole through which the ants can climb down into their underground city. Imagine trying to organize such a thing! You’d think that ants must be very good communicators.

The interesting part about ants is that they can’t talk. But this doesn’t stop these little animals. Ants communicate by sending out different chemicals (化学物质) from their bodies for other ants to smell. For example, if an ant finds a piece of food, it will send out a kind of chemical that says “there is food here”. The other ants will follow their noses toward the food until it is all gone. If there is something perilous around, ants will send out a kind of chemical that says “stay away”. Each city of ants has its own special smell. This way ants can tell if there is danger.

So next time you see ants, stop and think about how amazing these little animals are and what their lives are like.

Imagine a tiny robot crawling（爬）through your body, helping doctors with their work. It’s not from a science novel. Doctors are now using robots to do operations（手术）. This is because robots can do some work that doctors can’t. The robots carry small cameras, which allow doctors to look inside patients’ bodies. The robots also have tiny scissors and other tools. “It’s like having little hands inside the patients,” said Dr. Wang from a hospital in Beijing.

Here’s how they work: The doctor makes a small cut in a patient. Then, the doctor puts the robot through the cut. Next, the doctor controls the robot to reach where it needs to go. Finally, with the help of the robot, the doctor looks inside the patient’s body and begins to work.

The robots have many advantages for doctors and patients. They help cut medical costs and make difficult operations quicker and easier. They allow doctors to operate with less damage（伤害）to patients’ bodies, too. This helps them to heal（治愈）faster.

However, the robots aren’t perfect. They can be expensive. What’s more, they are just tools to help humans, and they must be used by skilled doctors. Even the best robots can’t do everything that humans can do.

Scientists are working to make robots, smarter. Someday, robots may do even more than expected for humans.