Chethan Pandarinath wants to enable people with paralysed limbs to reach out and grasp with a robotic arm as naturally as they would their own. To help him meet this goal, he has collected recordings of brain activity in people with paralysis. His hope, which is shared by many other researchers, is that he will be able to identify the patterns of electrical activity in neurons that correspond to a person's attempts to move their arm in a particular way, so that the instruction can then be fed to a prosthesis. Essentially, he wants to read their minds. "It turns out, that's a really challenging problem," says Pandarinath, a biomedical engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. "These signals from the brain -- they're really complicated."

SINGAPORE - Imagine a bot on your work computer that tracks your every click and keystroke, helping determine which of your tasks could be handled by one of its robot brethren. It's McKinsey & Co.'s entry into robotic process automation, which is spreading "robots" from the factory floor to the office cubicle as advancing technologies make it easier and more economically feasible for software to perform cognitive tasks now done by humans. It's transforming office work across the world, including in the Philippines' offshoring business processing centers, which employ more than a million people and generate annual revenue equal to about 7.5 percent of the nation's gross domestic product. It could cost a lot of people their jobs, but as McKinsey noted in a report earlier this year, it could also help their companies stay competitive and even capture a bigger market share. If bots haven't reached your office yet, just wait.

Patrick Winston, a beloved professor and computer scientist at MIT, died on July 19 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. A professor at MIT for almost 50 years, Winston was director of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 1972 to 1997 before it merged with the Laboratory for Computer Science to become MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). A devoted teacher and cherished colleague, Winston led CSAIL's Genesis Group, which focused on developing AI systems that have human-like intelligence, including the ability to tell, perceive, and comprehend stories. He believed that such work could help illuminate aspects of human intelligence that scientists don't yet understand. "My principal interest is in figuring out what's going on inside our heads, and I'm convinced that one of the defining features of human intelligence is that we can understand stories,'" said Winston, the Ford Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science, in a 2011 interview for CSAIL.

Often construction CIOs and executives are leery of "shiny" toys that offer glitz, glam, and a lot of hype, but little tangible benefits and ROI (return on investment). Do drones fall in this category, or are they beginning to offer true benefits to construction beyond the cool factor? Certainly, the forecast for commercial-drones market is on the rise, with many analysts predicting further growth. Technavio, for instance, predicts the global commercial drones market is anticipated to grow 36% between 2018 and 2022. Reasons for this include increased applicability of commercial drones in various verticals and access to better data insights using commercial drones.

Sussing out water potability in the field is sometimes nigh impossible, depending on the remoteness of the region. The United Nations estimates that 2 million tons of sewage and industrial and agricultural waste are discharged into the world's water supply each day. And while a range of chemical kits can test for bacterial risks, not all are equally thorough. Even with recent technological advances, water pollution leads to roughly 9 million premature deaths a year and 16% of all deaths worldwide. This motivated a pair of researchers at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland to investigate an AI-powered Android app capable of detecting water impurity, which they describe in a newly published paper on the preprint server Arxiv.org

AutoX, the Hong Kong and San Jose, Calif.-based autonomous vehicle technology company, is pushing past its grocery delivery roots and into the AV supplier and robotaxi business. AutoX has partnered with NEVS -- the Swedish holding company and electric vehicle manufacturer that bought Saab's assets out of bankruptcy -- to deploy a robotaxi pilot service in Europe by the end of 2020. Under the exclusive partnership, AutoX will integrate its autonomous drive technology into a next-generation electric vehicle inspired by NEVS's "InMotion" concept that was shown at CES Asia in 2017. This next-generation vehicle is being developed by NEVS in Trollhättan, Sweden. Testing of the autonomous NEVs vehicles will begin in the third quarter of 2019.

Cybersecurity suffers from a skills shortage in the market. As a result, the opportunities for artificial intelligence (AI) automation are vast. In many cases, AI is used to enhance and improve certain defensive aspects of cybersecurity. Prime examples are combating spam and detecting malware. From the attacker point of view, there are many incentives to using AI when trying to penetrate others' vulnerable systems.

WASHINGTON - A U.S. warship on Thursday destroyed an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz after it threatened the ship, President Donald Trump said. The incident marked a new escalation of tensions between the countries less than one month after Iran downed an American drone in the same waterway and Trump came close to retaliating with a military strike. In remarks at the White House, Trump blamed Iran for a "provocative and hostile" action and said the U.S. responded in self-defense. He said the Navy's USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship, took defensive action after the Iranian aircraft closed to within 1,000 yards of the ship and ignored multiple calls to stand down. "The United States reserves the right to defend our personnel, facilities and interests and calls upon all nations to condemn Iran's attempts to disrupt freedom of navigation and global commerce," Trump said.

The complete code to accompany this tutorial appears below.

Artificial intelligence, it seems, is infiltrating every corner of higher education. From improving the efficiency of sprinkler systems to supporting students with virtual teaching assistants, AI has quickly become a near-ubiquitous presence on some campuses. Colleges and universities are being asked to do more with less as they grapple with shifting demographics and the need to not just respond to, but also anticipate, the needs of today's students. And early returns suggest that AI can play a role in helping institutions tackle pernicious challenges -- from "summer melt" to student engagement -- and enable students to navigate the complexity of financial aid, admissions, campus life and course scheduling. In response, a growing number of products are touting AI and machine learning as part of their sales pitch.