A woman from West Yorkshire has set a new record for the fastest ever female to row across the Atlantic alone. Victoria Evans, from Huddersfield, took 40 days and 19 hours to make the crossing from Tenerife to Port St Charles in Barbados. On her journey she met sharks, bad weather, and even celebrated her 35th birthday on her own. Her crossing of 2, 559 miles beat the previous record time of 49 days and 7 hours set by a British rower, Kiko Mathews, set in 2018.

Victoria was very much a novice when she first considered the challenge, but she spent three years training, gaining the required qualifications(资格), and preparing to get seaworthy. Her 7-metre boat “True Blue“ was all that protected her from waves at the height of houses, dark nights, storms and heat. The most challenging part of the journey came around the halfway point when a wave knocked out her electrics, and she found herself locked out of her cabin.

The goal of the record-breaking adventure is to raise £50, 000 for the charity Women in Sport, which is to encourage women and girls to take part in sports. She has managed to raise a large amount while on her journey but it is still short of her target.

Victoria’s family followed her progress on social media, and were in Barbados to greet her as she made land. Victoria said, “As we turned into the marina(小船坞), I could hear my friends and family before I could see them. It’s amazing for people to fly to the other side of the world to watch you row basically 50 meters!” She decided to spend some down time in the Caribbean, recovering from her journey, before returning to her job as a lawyer in the UK.

Imagine this: You’re digging a well, and instead of hitting water, you unearth a headless human body made of pottery. This actually happened to farmers in Shanxi province in central China in 1974. Local archaeologists heard of the find and biked over to investigate. They realized that the figure had come from a tomb built over 2,000 years ago for China’s first emperor, Qin Shihuang. Archaeologists finally discovered three separate pits (穴) filled with 8,000 life-sized statues, all made from terracotta — a type of fired clay.

About a mile away from these pits, there’s a large mound (山丘). Archaeologists know that this is the main part of Qin Shihuang’s tomb, but they have never looked inside. They have left it alone out of respect for the first emperor and to protect the tomb as it is.

“Many people wish to see the treasures and mysteries inside, but we cannot,” says Xiuzhen Li, an archaeologist. Opening the tomb could damage its contents. Someday, Li hopes, we’ll have technology that will let us see inside the main part of the tomb without opening and disturbing it.

“Probably in the near future we’ll have some new technology that can see inside like an x-ray,” she says. Scientists are working on techniques that make it possible to see underground. Another idea is that a tiny robot could enter through a small hole and capture videos of what it sees. Even if this robotic exploration is done very carefully, however, it would still damage the tomb. For now, the Chinese government prefers to wait to do anything until they have even better technology.

The Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge is a science competition for U. S. middle-school students. It's run by Society for Science, which also publishes Science News Explores. The 30 finalists in this year's competition traveled to Washington, D. C. and also showed off their research projects.

Sharanya Chudgar, 14 years old, is one of the finalists in the competition and built a trash-collecting robot. The wheeled machine of the robot uses sensors to spot litter and a pan to pick it up. The robot's metal-detecting sensor helps it sort garbage from recyclables. And a light sensor can let the robot's solar panel angle itself toward the sun, collecting as much energy as possible.

Sharanya got the idea to build her trash collector by participating in litter cleanups. "When I signed up to volunteer at our local trash cleanup, I saw how much litter poliution there was and I knew that I had to fix this problem," Sharanya says. "People do have very limited time and resources, right? But robots don't. So it was then that my project idea formed in my head."

"Building the robot is my favorite part of this project," Sharanya says. "Ever since first grade, I've loved building Legos and building my robot felt just like building a Lego. But this project was a completely new experience since I hadn't ever had any experience in robotics before. Throughout the project, I had to use tons of power tools and I even had to cut pieces of metal to certain lengths. Whenever I needed to use a power tool, I had to turn to my dad who was always there to help out if necessary."

"It might seem difficult at times, but sticking to this and changing just one variable at a time gets you the best results," Sharanya says. This middle school scientist is solving global problems of litter pollution. For some, a science project might be an assignment or a fun hobby. But for Sharanya, doing research can also be a chance to help others and make the world a better place.