John Fendrick is the owner of the farm.He inspects the progress of the animals by looking at a computer screen.“The door of the milk opens up and they walk in and they get milked.The door opens up and they walk out.”The robot does all the work.The robot also tests the milk for possible contamination(污染).If it finds a problem,it rejects the milk.When the amount of milk coming out of the cow slows,the machine knows to stop,and sends the cow on its way.

Milking robots are becoming popular among dairy(乳品的)farmers in the US.John Fendrick says the robots have changed the life on a dairy farm.

Most dairy farmers must milk their cows twice a day.But Mr.Fendrick’s cows do not follow such schedule;they stay in the field until they want to be milked by the robot.Some of them come to be milked in the middle of the night.Mr.Fendrick doesn’t even need to be there to watch them.He can watch from his telephone.He can learn when each cow was milked and how much she produced.He can also learn if a cow has not been milked for a long time.

The milking robot is not low-cost technology.Mr.Fendrick paid more than$150,000 for it.But the notes paying someone to milk the cows is also costly.

“In three years,I will have paid off the difference with this,and I don’t have to be the person who’s always on call to milk.The fact is that we have a life,and our cows are able to function without us—to us,it’s well worth the money.”

Medha Gupta sometimes felt worried about making the 20-minute walk from the corner where the school bus dropped her off to her home in Herndon,Va.—especially during the colder months in winter.

Her mother, Divya Gupta had a suggestion: write an app. She was half-kidding, but Medha didn’t take the challenge lightly.So she set out to work.

The result was Safe Travel, an app designed by Medha to help walkers feel more secure when they are travelling alone. Using the iPhone, a person can program it to send a warning to someone he or she trusts if he or she fails to arrive at a destination within a certain time.

It was the first iOS app that Medha had created. While she didn’t think much would come from the project, her effort caught the eye of judges for the annual Congressional App Challenge,who selected her as the winner for Virginia’s 10th District.

The App Challenge is designed to encourage students to consider careers in science, technology, engineering, and math by experimenting with coding and computer science.Winning students are invited to attend a reception on Capitol Hill in April and also received $250 in Amazon Web Service credits.

Medha said it took her about 40 hours to design, program and test the app.As for her next app? Medha’s not certain. She temporarily has her app-development ambitions on hold because she’s busy teaching herself artificial intelligence to help deal with improper words on social media platforms.Yes,she knows that there are teams of engineers probably doing the same thing.But she figures it can’t hurt her own part,too.

“If we see something wrong with the world,we should do something about it,” she said.“After all,the only one stopping us from doing something is ourselves.”

Just 10 days after a first failed try ended with Franky Zapata up to his neck in water, the French jet-ski champion successfully crossed the English Channel on his self-made “fly-board” Sunday morning.

Taking off at 8:17 a.m., he flew across the 21.7 miles that separate the French town of Sangatte from Saint Margaret’s at Cliffe on British coast. The trip took a total of 22 minutes with one refueling stop in the middle.

The French inventor’s flight came 110 years after famous pioneering pilot Louis Bleriot flew the first plane across the Channel in 1909. Zapata became known as the “flying soldier” when he showed off his invention before the world’s media at France’s annual Bastille Day military parade on July 14.

At a press conference on Saturday, Zapata said he felt much more confident of success than his failed journey just over a week ago. On July 25, Zapata had launched near Sangatte Beach on his flying board, but had to abandon the challenge when he dropped a few minutes later into English waters after hitting the supply boat platform at very low speed.

Zapata arrived on British soil at 8:38 a.m., landing on a platform in a field at the top of a cliff. He thanked his wife, his family and his team upon landing. He also thanked the two. British women who own the field he landed on.

Zapata spoke to the French television networks in Saint Margaret’s, explaining that landing on the stage of the refueling boat was still very tricky. They had planned for the boat to remain still, but it was “impossible” as the boat moved along with the waves. Zapata burst into tears when his interview was interrupted by a call from his 9-year-old son.