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Chinese students spent 200 continuous days in a “lunar lab” in Beijing, state media said Friday, as the country prepares for its long-term goal of putting people on the moon.

Four students crammed into a 160-square-metre (1,720-square-foot) cabin called “Yuegong-1”—Lunar Palace—on the campus of Beihang University, testing the limits of humans’ ability to live in a self-contained space, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The volunteers lived in the sealed lab to simulate a long-term space mission with no input from the outside world.

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for the 2017 tallinn architecture biennale, noumena has presented its installation based on the future of robots and its adaptability with the environment. deep learning has paved the way for machines to expand beyond narrow capabilities to soon achieving human-level performance on intellectual tasks. however, as artificial intelligence — A.I. — establishes its place within humans, society will need to develop a framework for both to thrive. a new form of artificial life will emerge, finding space at the peripheries of humanity in order to not compete for human-dominated resources. A.I. will attempt to improve its operating surroundings to not just survive but be self-sustaining, forming the basis of a civilization constrained at the intersection of nature and technology.


image © tõnu tunnel.

barcelonian based practice noumena has developed a framework to build this narrative based on the cross disciplinary intersection of computational design, mechanical and electronic design, rapid prototyping interaction and mapping. nowadays, computing tools as well as rapid prototyping machines allow to have a quick practical feedback on design solutions and to iterate experimenting different possibility at the same time giving the chance to choose and custom a functional part.

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One of the enduring sci-fi moments of the big screen—R2-D2 beaming a 3D image of Princess Leia into thin air in “Star Wars”—is closer to reality thanks to the smallest of screens: dust-like particles.

Scientists have figured out how to manipulate nearly unseen specks in the air and use them to create 3D images that are more realistic and clearer than holograms, according to a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature. The study’s lead author, Daniel Smalley, said the new technology is “printing something in space, just erasing it very quickly.”

In this case, scientists created a small butterfly appearing to dance above a finger and an image of a graduate student imitating Leia in the Star Wars scene.

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If you were awestruck by the New Year’s Day super moon, hold onto your pants.

On January 31, around midnight, the full moon will not only be super, it will be a blue moon and a blood moon.

The blue moon comes as it will be the second full moon in a month. That happens every two and a half years, hence the saying “once in a blue moon”.

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