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An adjustable shading system that adapts itself independently over the course of the day, without sensors or motors and largely maintenance-free? It really is possible: an ETH doctoral student at the Institute for Building Materials has developed an alternative to motor-driven sunshades.

It gets hot in the city in summer, and buildings in direct sunlight get particularly warm. At night, it can then be difficult to get rid of that accumulated heat. These days, many people dream of efficient air conditioning. Chiara Vailati had a different dream: after completing her studies in Italy, the pursued the idea of creating an adjustable and autonomous sunshade for houses, to reduce the amount of heat that enters a building and therefore the need for cooling. She had high requirements: “I wanted the system to be made of environmentally friendly materials, use very little energy and have low installation and maintenance costs,” remembers Vailati.

Vailati has since been able to realise her idea: during her doctoral project with Professor Ingo Burgert at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Building Materials, she designed an innovative shading system. Anyone who is now picturing a fully automatic high-tech shading with sensors, actuators and complex controls is a long way off the mark. Vailati’s prototype may be high-tech, but it is still refreshingly modest. The system uses shade-producing wooden planks and requires no sensors or motors – or even electricity. However, it does still change to suit to the weather conditions: the planks move autonomously. Multiple pairs of planks aligned in parallel create a kind of roof that opens and closes itself. The construction can be placed, for example, horizontally over a window on a building’s façade.

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The United States and Russia aren’t the only two nations working hard at realizing their space-faring dreams. China has quickly ramped up its high-flying ambitions in the past couple of decades and late 2018 will mark a real milestone for the country’s space program. The country just announced that it plans on launching a lunar rover to the far side of the Moon in December of this year.

The announcement comes via China’s state-run news agency CCTV, and China seems bullish on the prospect of being the first country to explore the far side of Earth’s moon with a robotic rover.

The mission, named Chang’e 4, follows in the footsteps of its predecessor (you guessed it, Chang’e 3) which saw a rover nicknamed “Jade Rabbit” land on the near side of the Moon back in 2013. That rover ran out of steam in August of 2016, and the model that will be flying to the far side is built largely of backup parts from the Chang’e 3 mission.

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Last week, NASA announced the awardees for an ongoing effort to foster commercial activity in space. This effort allows 13 companies to study the future of commercial human spaceflight in low-Earth orbit, including long-term opportunities for the International Space Station.

I’m pleased to share that NanoRacks is one of these awardees.

This study is not only a big step for NanoRacks, but a big step for the commercial space ecosystem. Today, we are the largest commercial user of the International Space Station and are proud of the impact we’ve made to help foster this ecosystem and bring customers from all over the world into to orbit. This study will allow us to take our vision to the next step and detail the viability for habitable and automated platforms for low-Earth orbit.

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This story is brought to you by SynbiCITE, which is accelerating the commercialization of synthetic biology applications. To learn how SynbiCITE is nucleating a sustainable UK economy, visit www.synbicite.com.

Just as Henry Ford’s assembly line revolutionized the automobile industry, synthetic biology is being revolutionized by automated DNA assembly (see SynBioBetaLive! with Opentrons). The key features of an assembly line translate well into the field of synthetic biology – speed, accuracy, reproducibility and validation. Instead of welding chassis together, small robotic arms are lifting delicate plates holding dozens of samples, adding and removing miniscule amounts of fluid.

In 2014, Imperial College London received £2 million to develop a DNA Synthesis and Construction Foundry to operate with SynbiCITE, the UK Innovation and Knowledge Centre for synthetic biology. Speaking at the Foundry’s inception, SynbiCITE co-director Prof. Paul Freemont said, “Standardizing the methods for synthesising DNA is crucial if we are going to scale up efforts to design and create this genetic material. The new DNA Synthesis and Construction Foundry will streamline and automate the ‘writing’ of DNA at an industrial scale so that tens of thousands of designed DNA constructions can be built and tested.”

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Kinema Systems and GhostRobotics faced off and shared their pitches with the live audience at NVIDIA’S GPU Technology Conference (GTC) to showcase different approaches with autonomous systems using deep learning, machine learning and AI.

Kinema Systems, based in Menlo Park, Calif., is building innovative deep learning and 3D vision-based robotic solutions for logistics and manufacturing.

From Philadelphia, Pa., GhostRobotics is revolutionizing legged robotics and the market for autonomous unmanned ground vehicles used in unstructured terrain and harsh environments.

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“In his brilliant book, Kai-Fu Lee applies his superpowers to predicting the disruptive shifts that will define the AI-powered future and proposes a revolutionary social contract that forges a new synergy between AI and the human heart.” – Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO Salesforce.

“AI is surpassing human intelligence in more and more domains, transforming the planet. Kai-Fu Lee has been at the epicentre of the AI revolution for thirty years and has now written the definitive guide.” – Erik Brynjolfsson, professor, MIT, bestselling co-author of The Second Machine Age and Machine, Platform, Crowd

“Kai-Fu Lee is at the forefront of the coming AI revolution, helping us transcend the limitations of thought, reach, and vision. This seminal book on AI is a must read for anyone serious about understanding the future of our species.” – Peter Diamandis, Executive Founder, Singularity University; bestselling author of Abundance and BOLD.

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