The Ecoculture company will build the fourth stage of a greenhouse complex for the production of tomatoes and cucumbers in the Bobrovsky district of the Voronezh region. The area of the new greenhouse will be 40 hectares, and investments in the project will amount to 15 billion rubles. This will complete the implementation of the investment project launched in 2018 to create Europe's largest modern greenhouse facility. To date, three stages of greenhouses with a total area of 60 hectares and a cost of 20 billion rubles have been put into operation. The production processes in greenhouses are controlled by a central computer that controls the air temperature and carbon dioxide content in the room, regulates watering, supplementary lighting, fertilizing with minerals, and ventilation.

Due to international sanctions against Russia, the ruble has tumbled in value--so far, in fact, it's now worth less than a Robux. That's really bad news for the ruble, because the Robux is a video game currency that's mostly meaningful only to children. Roblox, also known as "that game your kids play that looks like Minecraft but isn't," has been around for over a decade. But with an explosion of at-home players during the pandemic, it's gone from fad to phenomenon, now boasting more than 100 million active players. It's so popular that its virtual currency value, which can in fact be converted back into US dollars, is now worth approximately $.0125, which is more than the Russian Federation's ruble.

NUST MISIS engineers together with Karfidov Lab have developed a working prototype of a vending machine for preparing healthy dishes. The device cooks dishes from vegetables and cereals in 30-60 seconds, which are suitable for those who live a healthy lifestyle or suffer from allergies and other specific diseases. According to the developers, the healthy food device will cost 1.4 million rubles. Commissioned by the AFM private company, NUST MISIS engineers, together with the Karfidov Lab design bureau, have developed a prototype of the Salatomat vending machine, which can become part of the city's healthy food infrastructure. The device is loaded with 16 basic ingredients – vegetables, cereals, potatoes, noodles – and 20 dressings and toppings (sauces, cheese, nuts).

A Moscow-based startup called Neiry is developing "human-friendly neural interfaces" applicable to a variety of daily tasks -- from gaming and entertainment, to medical therapy, to training, to business. Supported by Russian state innovation programs, this startup believes it can "improve and restore human abilities and functions that were previously unattainable," and contribute to "the acceleration of computer-integrated human evolution." Neiry's approach combines headsets with an advanced neural control approach. Its technology is non-invasive in the sense that no device needs to be implanted: "You simply wear it on your head just like you put on a watch or a sports bracelet on your hand," says the company. "Our neural networks are trained in such a way that the user does not need to learn how to work with the neuro-headset, unlike other 99% of similar devices. As a result, users can perform "up to eight different actions per unit of a digital image, while 99% of similar devices barely perform two or three actions." The startup claims its solution is equally compatible with eye tracking, electrodermal activity (EDA), and speech recognition technologies. Combined with brain-computer interfaces, the latter can multiply the number of commands when using the neural interface. Neiry is now developing an infrastructure for automated collection, processing and storage of large amounts or neural data. "Thanks to unique algorithms, the brain's bioelectric activity can be analyzed, enabling users of the newest edtech applications and games to control the related parameters of brain signals.

We'd like to invite you to participate in an unusual machine learning competition -- Black Box Challenge (blackboxchallenge.com/eng). The conception is simple -- one need to program an agent that can play a game with unknown rules. At each time step agent is given an environment state vector and has a few possible actions. The rewards may be delayed and have stochastic nature -- the same actions can lead to different rewards. The competition is created with support of Mail.ru (one of the largest Russian Internet companies) and Data-Centric Alliance (DCA is a Russian company specializing on big data and high-load systems), and the winners will be rewarded with pleasant prizes: You can read about the problem in detail at the site.(blackboxchallenge.com/eng)

The other day, the National University of Science and Technology (MISiS) hosted a meeting on the development of robot technologies during the implementation of projects for the National Technology Initiative. Meeting participants watched a presentation of an international project to create an online site for testing unmanned equipment. Russia's KAMAZ Automotive Plant and IT solutions developer Cognitive Technologies have said they are ready to unveil the first Russian-made autonomous truck, an autopilot system that can detect road signs, lane markings and other vehicles. According to developers, the first autonomous commercial trucks could reach production by 2020. Some estimates show that the use of online testing sites will make it possible to save up to two billion rubles that would otherwise be spent on real-life tests and simulated real-life situations.