Chinese astronauts conducted a science lecture to millions of students on Dec. 9, 2021 from the Tiangong space station. The three astronauts, Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu, showed life in space and conducted experiments in microgravity.

It was the first lecture of the Tiangong Class, China ’s first extraterrestrial (地球外的) lecture series. Its goal is to popularize space science.

“The laboratory of the space station has many conditions that the Earth laboratory does not have, such as the environment of weightlessness and radiation, ” said Wen Xin, a professor at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He said that important jobs for astronauts in the space station include cell observation and maintaining plant life.

In the lecture, Ye demonstrated experiments related to cell growth in a weightless environment. He compared the growth and shape of cells in artificial gravity and zero-gravity to study their changing principles in space.

Another experiment in the space lecture was shown by Wang Yaping. She illustrated how a paper flower “bloomed” on the surface of water in Tiangong space station. She explained that the surface tension of water is magnified (放大) in space due to zero gravity.

One of the examples of surface tension on Earth is that some insects can “walk” on water. They use surface tension to “stand” instead of falling through water.

Surface tension plays a key role in product development. Researchers around the world are measuring surface tension to improve the quality of their products, according to Biolin Scientific, a science company. Paints are tailored to stick better on the surfaces they are applied to. Surface tension also has impacts in drug development.

Although the astronauts are thousands of miles away, their research does influence our life. Shi Yi, a teacher at the Beijing No. 101 Middle School, told China Daily that the space lecture was “an eye-opening experience that would arouse students’ interest in science”.

Until now, robots have carried their pretty weak brains inside them. They've received instructions-such as take this, or carry that-and done it. Not only that, but they've worked in environments such as factories and warehouses specially designed or adapted for them.

Cloud robotics promises something entirely new: robots with super-brains stored in the online cloud. The thinking is that these robots, with their intellectual impact, will be more flexible in the jobs they do and the places they can work, perhaps even speeding up their arrival in our homes.

Google Cloud and Amazon Cloud both have robot brains that are learning and growing inside them. The dream behind cloud robotics is to create robots that can see, hear, understand natural language and the world around them.

The Fetch Cloud Robotics Platform is a cloud-driven Autonomous Mobile Robot(AMR) solution that addresses material handling and data collection for warehouses.

One of the leading players in cloud robotics research is Robo Brain, a project led by researchers at Stanford and Cornell universities in the US. Funded by Google, Microsoft government institutions and universities, the team are building a robot brain on the Amazon cloud, learning how to integrate different software systems and different sources of data.

Another one to watch is the Everyday Robot Project, by X, the 'moonshot factory' at Alphabet, Google's parent company. The project aims to develop robots intelligent enough to make sense of the places we live and work. They're making headway too-testing cloud robots in Alphabet offices in Northern California. So far, the tasks are simple, such as sorting the recycling(pretty slowly says X), but it's the shape of robots to come.

It’s said that about one third of the world’s citizens live in substandard housing. But researchers have created free plans now available online for building houses using pre-made parts that fit together perfectly, which could help solve this housing problem.

The world population is expected to grow to more than 8 billion by 2030, and the housing situation in city is already a huge problem. Building new homes in the traditional way still takes weeks or months.

In a London neighborhood, a group of volunteers are constructing a house made of pre-made plywood panels (预制胶合板面板) and parts, the so-called WikiHouse. All parts were precisely cut in a Computer Numerical Control, or CNC machine, following a free plan downloaded from the Internet.

Founder of the UK-based on WikiHouse Foundation, architectural designer Alastair Parvin, said this could be the solution for affordable housing. WikiHouse is essentially a series of technologies we’re developing aimed at simplifying the process of making really sustainable high-performance houses to a point where almost anyone can do it.

Precise cutting allows a perfect fit for all parts, which speeds up the process of assembly (装配). No special tools are required. The WikiHouse was built in 10 days for exhibition purposes. Then, it was taken apart and reassembled elsewhere for permanent use.

“Open-source (开源)software is now really established; it drives a lot of the software we use,” Parvin said. “What's happening now is that that's coming into the world of physical things, so we're effectively building a kind of Wikipedia for physical material.”

Parvin said the project is in its early stages, with limited availability. But he said he expects it to grow as more people start showing interest in houses whose assembly requires no special skills.