1 . Farmers have long relied on things that work without their involvement — bees to pollinate (授粉) flowers, earthworms (蚯蚓) to turn the soil, swallows to eat pests — to make sure that crops grow the right way. Now a team of British researchers is trying to take this hands-off thinking in a high-tech direction. Last October, scientists at Harper Adams University started a farm called the Hands Free Hectare to make the entire process of farming — from sowing and fertilizing to harvest — fully automatic. The project has just succeeded with five tons of robot-grown barley (大麦).

“We believe the best idea is that in the future, farmers will manage groups of smaller, autonomous machines, ” the researchers explained. “They will go out and work in the fields, allowing the farmer to use their time more effectively instead of having to drive up and down the fields.”

At the moment, agricultural machines — very large and heavy — can cover a lot of space quickly. But there are shortcomings. “Fertilizer gets sprayed over entire farms, regardless of the different needs of different crops. They’re also so heavy that they’re damaging farmers’ soils,” researcher Jonathan Gill said.

Gill and his colleagues went smaller: a tractor, a combine and a harvester, which followed a programmed route, using GPS. Altogether, they spent less than ￡200, 000 on equipment, and used open-source technology and a drone (无人机). Eventually the system will be complex enough to treat different parts of a field, or even individual plants, differently.

The team is quick to caution that they don’t want to put farmers out of work. They said, “Instead of being busy in the fields, the farmer will manage the machines and monitor their crops.” The next stop for the barley will be a brewery. That’s not going to be completely automatic. At least not yet.

The problem with     1     (learn) history by key dates and moments is that it gives us a spotlit view of the past — bright stars of major events twinkling against a giant — but dark and mysterious night sky of history.     2     a result, we lose the sense of the context of major events, and the ways in     3     our history — and our world — have been, and still are, connected.

So we set out to find out     4     was happening elsewhere on October 14, 1066 as the Battle of Hastings was raging.

The Norman knights were also expanding into Sicily and mainland Italy, while the migration of Seljuk Turks from Central Asia was about to threaten the Byzantine Empire,     5     (eventual) leading to the call for the First Crusade.

But my     6     (favor) moment in 1066 is from China, where Sima Guang began writing his monumental history of China,     7     (know) as the Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government.

Frances Wood, a former head of the Chinese section at the British Library     8     (dig) out an early manuscript of this work. Wood explained how this history     9     (suppose) to be of use to those in charge — by setting in context the     10     (decide) made by China’s leaders in centuries past (403B. C. -207B. C. ) and by analyzing the moral virtues of their actions.