Japan plans to put a man on the moon around 2030, according to a new proposal by the government's Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). From a report: It is the first time JAXA has revealed an intention to send Japanese astronauts beyond the International Space Station, and it will mostly likely be part of an international mission, the agency said. The announcement from Japan is just the latest in a series of ambitious space exploration plans by Asian countries, with the increasing competition for space-related power and prestige in the region echoing that of the Cold War space race of the mid-20th century. In December 2016, China announced plans to land a rover on Mars by 2020 as well as a manned mission to the Moon at some point in the future.

Should you ever travel to one of the many uninhibited islands that dot the most remote reaches of Earth's oceans, chances are you'll find plastic bottles littering the shore. The Guardian reports: A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and the number will jump another 20 percent by 2021, creating an environmental crisis some campaigners predict will be as serious as climate change. New figures obtained by the Guardian reveal the surge in usage of plastic bottles, more than half a trillion of which will be sold annually by the end of the decade. The demand, equivalent to about 20,000 bottles being bought every second, is driven by an apparently insatiable desire for bottled water and the spread of a western, urbanised "on the go" culture to China and the Asia Pacific region. More than 480bn plastic drinking bottles were sold in 2016 across the world, up from about 300bn a decade ago. If placed end to end, they would extend more than halfway to the sun. By 2021 this will increase to 583.3bn, according to the most up-to-date estimates from Euromonitor International's global packaging trends report. Most plastic bottles used for soft drinks and water are made from polyethylene terephthalate (Pet), which is highly recyclable. But as their use soars across the globe, efforts to collect and recycle the bottles to keep them from polluting the oceans, are failing to keep up.

A city in southwest Iran posted the country's hottest temperature ever recorded Thursday afternoon, and may have tied the world record for the most extreme high temperature. From a report on The Washington Post: Etienne Kapikian, a forecaster at French meteorological agency MeteoFrance, posted to Twitter that the city of Ahvaz soared to "53.7C" (128.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Kapikian said the temperature is a "new absolute national record of reliable Iranian heat" (alternative, non-paywalled source) and that it was the hottest temperature ever recorded in June over mainland Asia. Iran's previous hottest temperature was 127.4. Weather Underground's website indicates the temperature in Ahvaz climbed even higher, hitting 129.2 degrees at both 4:51 and 5 p.m. local time. If that 129.2 degrees reading is accurate, it would arguably tie the hottest temperature ever measured on Earth in modern times.

Dthief shares a report from New Scientist: Now and then, a painter like Claude Monet or Pablo Picasso comes along and turns the art world on its head. They invent new aesthetic styles, forging movements such as impressionism or abstract expressionism. But could the next big shake-up be the work of a machine? An artificial intelligence has been developed that produces images in unconventional styles -- and much of its output has already been given the thumbs up by members of the public. The team [of researchers] modified a type of algorithm known as a generative adversarial network (GAN), in which two neural nets play off against each other to get better and better results. One creates a solution, the other judges it -- and the algorithm loops back and forth until the desired result is reached. In the art AI, one of these roles is played by a generator network, which creates images. The other is played by a discriminator network, which was trained on 81,500 paintings to tell the difference between images we would class as artworks and those we wouldn't -- such as a photo or diagram, say. The discriminator was also trained to distinguish different styles of art, such as rococo or cubism. The clever twist is that the generator is primed to produce an image that the discriminator recognizes as art, but which does not fall into any of the existing styles.

Fitbit has published the results of a study that uses their longitudinal sleep database to analyze millions of nights of Sleep Stages data to determine how age, gender, and duration affect sleep quality. (Sleep Stages is a relatively new Fitbit feature that "uses motion detection and heart rate variability to estimate the amount of time users spend awake in light, deep, and REM sleep each night.") Here are the findings: The average Fitbit user is in bed for 7 hours and 33 minutes but only gets 6 hours and 38 minutes of sleep. The remaining 55 minutes is spent restless or awake. That may seem like a lot, but it's actually pretty common. That said, 6 hours and 38 minutes is still shy of the 7+ hours the the CDC recommends adults get. For the second year in a row Fitbit data scientists found women get about 25 minutes more sleep on average each night compared to men. The percentage of time spent in each sleep stage was also similar -- until you factor in age. Fitbit data shows that men get a slightly higher percentage of deep sleep than women until around age 55 when women take the lead. Women win when it comes to REM, logging an average of 10 more minutes per night than men. Although women tend to average more REM than men over the course of their lifetime, the gap appears to widen around age 50.