【推荐1】The science of papermaking addresses the methods, equipment, and materials used to make paper and cardboard, these being used widely for printing, writing, and packaging, among many other purposes and useful products. Today almost all paper is produced using industrial machinery.     1    

The method of manual（手工的）papermaking changed very little over time, despite advances in technologies.    2    Separate the useful fibre from the rest of raw materials. Beat down the fibre into pulp（纸浆）.Adjust the color, chemical, biological, and other properties of the paper. Screen （筛选）the resulting liquid. Press and dry to get the actual paper.

    3     It is made of stainless materials and set in a wooden frame similar to that of a window. Then completely bathe it in the liquid and draw it out. Water is removed and the wet mat of fibre is laid on top of a damp cloth. The fairly damp fiber is then dried. Finally, the paper is then cut to the desired shape and packed.

The wooden frame is called a “deckle” （定纸框）.     4     The “deckle edges” are one of the indications that the paper was made by hand. Deckle-edged paper is occasionally imitated today to create the impression of old-fashioned luxury.

    5     It is also used in paper factories to check the quality of the production process. The “handsheets" made according to TAPPI Standard T205 are tested for paper characteristics such as brightness, strength and degree of sizing.

【推荐3】The Waverly Pilot (翻译耳机)

Technology seems to be advancing daily, but the Pilot by Waverly Labs, the world’s first translation earpiece, might be a truly huge step forward for communication.

The product

Though the Pilot is still very much in development, the product will be sold as two earpieces and a smartphone app. When first released, the technology will translate between only five European languages -English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese.    1    The app runs speech recognition, machine translation and speech synthesis processes before sending the new speech to the listener’s earpiece.

Applications

    2    The added convenience of these will make the device useful in several social spheres, particularly business and travel. While sales meetings and tourism may be revolutionized by the Pilot, the desire to communicate with a foreign crush inspired Waverly Labs’ CEO to develop it.

Sci-fi dreams coming true

    3    It reached its US$75,000 goal in 15 minutes, US$ 1 million in hours and eventually more than US$2 million with the help of over 11,000 backers. It seems that the Pilot captured the imagination of many who had seen similar technology in science fiction, like a Forbes writer expressed it in the following quote. “The Waverly Labs Pilot is as close as I’ve seen to the Universal Translator I was promised by Star Trek when I was a kid.”

Flying into the future

Though the Pilot’s translation app is available now, the entire earpiece package is planned for delivery in May 2017 at a retail cost of US$250 to $300.    4    Additional language packages will be developed and sold soon after the product’s release so that people everywhere can make use of this amazing device.

【推荐1】The Google Brain team has been working on computing systems called “neural networks”—systems that were designed based on how neurons work in the human brain.

This time, they gave a mission to three of the neural networks, which they named Alice, Bob and Eve. Each of the networks had its own job—Alice sent messages to Bob, Eve tried to “eavesdrop”(偷听) and find out the messages, and Alice and Bob had to figure out a way to hide the messages from Eve. All the help that Alice and Bob got from the researchers before the mission began was made up of a set of numbers, which Eve didn’t have access                    to.

At first, Alice was not very good at sending secret messages. But slowly it worked on a way to encrypt(加密) them—putting information into a special code so that others could not understand it if they got the information—using he numbers given by researchers. And after practice, Bob also came to be able to decrypt(解密) Alice’s messages. Without the numbers or keys, Eve failed to understand Alice’s “speech” most of the time.

This test is considered a big step in the development of computers’ learning skills. “Computing with neural networks on this scale has only become possible in the last few years, so we truly are at the beginning of what’s possible, ” Joe Sturonas of US encryption company PKWARE told New Scientist magazine.

Unfortunately, the test happened only one week after UK physicist Stephen Hawking, While speaking at Cambridge University, warned how AI(artificial intelligence)could develop a will of its own. This could be “either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to human being”, he said.

But just as Sturonas pointed out, no matter what the possibilities of computers are in the future, they are just starting out. We still have plenty of time to work out a solution before they get anywhere near becoming a threat to humanity.

【推荐2】Want to see 16 sunrises in one day? Float in zero gravity? Be one of the few to have gazed upon our home planet from space? In just four years’ time, and for an astronomical $9.5 million dollars, it’s claimed you can.

What’s being billed as the world’s first luxury space hotel, Aurora Station, was announced Thursday at the Space 2.0 Summit in San Jose, California. Developed by US-based space technology start-up Orion Span, the fully modular space station will host six people at a time, including two crew members, for 12-day trips of space travel. It plans to welcome its first guests in 2022.

“Our goal is to make space accessible to all,” Frank Bunger, CEO and founder of Orion Span, said in a statement. “Upon launch, Aurora Station goes into service immediately, bringing travelers into space quickly and at a lower price point than ever seen before.” While a $10 million trip is outside the budget of most people’s two-week vacations, Orion Span claims to offer a real astronaut experience.

During their 12-day adventure, the super-rich travelers will fly at a height of 200 miles above the Earth’s surface in Low Earth Orbit, or LEP, where they will see incredible views of the blue planet. The hotel will orbit Earth every 90 minutes, which means guests will see around 16 sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours.

Activities on board include taking part in research experiments such as growing food while in orbit--which guests can take home for a super-smug souvenir—and soaring over their hometown. Guests can have live video chats with their less-fortunate loved ones back home via high-speed wireless Internet access and, upon return to Earth, will be greeted with a specially arranged hero’s welcome. While enjoying the thrills of zero gravity, the travelers will be able to float freely through the hotel, taking in views of the northern and southern Aurora from the station’s windows.

DepositsHYPERLINK “https://www.orionspan.com/aurora-station-reservations”（订金）are already being aHYPERLINK“http://www.orisonspan.com/aurora-station-reservations”cHYPERLINK“http://www.orionspan.com/aurora-station-reservations” cepted for future stays on the space hotel. The $80,000 is fully returnable, should applicants find themselves unable to rise to the full $9.5 million. Travelers will complete a three-month Orion Span Astronaut Certification (OSAC) program before takeoff. Orion Span has a team of space industry veterans who together have more than 140 years of human space experience.