Technologies

Populous has announced the creation of an unusual stadium as part of the construction of the giant ultra-modern Kiddiyah complex in Saudi Arabia. The stadium will be located on a 200-meter high cliff above the main part of the complex. It will be able to accommodate 45,000 visitors.

The structure is designed as a universal platform for various public events – sporting, cultural, social, and even shows. The main feature of the stadium is the empty space above the cliff itself, which creates a magnificent view of Kiddia. However, this space can be blocked off with a giant retractable LED wall, which will become a screen to show the necessary content. The rest of the walls will also be equipped with the same LED panels, allowing for spectacular events to be held inside.

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In Bricktown (Oklahoma) the construction of Legends Tower skyscraper is planned. This building is to become the tallest among the high-rises in America. Designers of the project have done a lot of work to make its height reach the mark of 581 meters or 1750 feet. In this figure you can see the symbolism – it was in 1750 that the United States got the 46th state in the person of Oklahoma. Legends Tower will be 39 meters higher than World Trade Center One in New York and will occupy the 6th position in the world ranking of skyscrapers.
Next to Legends Tower will be erected three more towers, each of which will rise to 105 meters. One of them will be called Dream Tower and will house a 480-room luxury hotel with 85 residential condominiums. The total usable area of this architectural ensemble will be an impressive 460,000 square meters. meters. The towers will have 1,776 residential units of various classes from budget to premium. The project also provides for the allocation of space for commercial use and trade.

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Google has unveiled its new Lumiere AI for video creation. This is not a commercial product, but a research project to test innovative technologies. At the current stage, it has no restrictions imposed by legislation and social norms on the work of generative networks, and therefore the result is surprisingly good.
Lumiere is based on the “spatio-temporal architecture of U-net”, which forms the structure of the video throughout its entire length. This is fundamentally different from the classical approach, where the AI generates the start and end frames and then tries to guess what to fill the space between them with.

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A team of scientists from Switzerland’s EPFL, led by Prof. Sylvester Micera, has conducted research on the possibility of humans using a third arm. This was done within the framework of the Third Arm project, which is aimed at studying the possibilities of human use of artificial body parts. In this case, the possibilities of concentrating attention on controlling three functional limbs at once were studied.
At the first stage of the study, participants were given virtual reality headsets, gloves and a special belt with sensors for abdominal muscle movement. Three hands were displayed in VR, the third was symmetrical, with two thumbs on each side, and was controlled by abdominal movements. Experiments with 61 volunteers for 150 hours showed that people very quickly master such a system and begin to control the third hand quite well.

What is important – the participants did not have to strain too much, concentrate their attention, they could, for example, control the third hand and talk at the same time. At the second stage, the virtual tool was replaced by a physical one, in the form of a plastic stick on a belt with sensors. Users were able to move it without tilting the body with quite a lot of accuracy.

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Researchers from the Spanish research center IMDEA Materials Institute together with air filter manufacturer Venfilter have developed a solution that can destroy microbes while filtering indoor air. The optimal substance for this purpose is active metal oxides, but there are many questions about the best form in which to use them. In the current experiment, the choice was given to a spray with metal nanoparticles.
The idea is to create a renewable coating on the inlet pathways of typical filters that will kill microorganisms. To do this, the spray is sprayed on the filter, about every few days, similar to household cleaners. To create a filter with a film of metal oxide is not commercially profitable – not all rooms need such protection, it is selective and the consumer himself determines the need for such costs.

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