The Australian government has gone to market seeking for help to design, develop, and roll out an online digital tool that farmers can use to assess the risk and impact caused by climate change. According to the request for tender (RFT), the drought resilience self-assessment tool (DR SAT) would be used to provide data and online drought resilience assessment capability to give farmers insight to help improve their decision-making capabilities, help them better understand and manage risk and uncertainty, as well as help identify options to improve their business resilience and drought preparedness. Additionally, the capability's architecture, when delivered, is expected to be designed for the potential of a national rollout, as well facilitate individual data entry, analysis, and feature data visualisation and user dashboards, the tender said. The initial phase of work would involve delivering a proof of concept through four pilots across the country. The DR SAT would be delivered as part of the federal government's AU$5 billion Future Drought Fund managed by the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment.

A smart city is a municipality that uses information and communication technologies (ICT) to increase operational efficiency, share information with the public and improve both the quality of government services and citizen welfare. While the exact definition varies, the overarching mission of a smart city is to optimize city functions and drive economic growth while improving quality of life for its citizens using smart technology and data analysis. Value is given to the smart city based on what they choose to do with the technology, not just how much technology they may have. Several major characteristics are used to determine a city's smartness. A smart city's success depends on its ability to form a strong relationship between the government -- including its bureaucracy and regulations -- and the private sector.

Introduced in 2019, by IBM, Brazil has launched the largest research facility, that focuses on artificial intelligence, through a collaboration between the private and public sector. The Artificial Intelligence Center (C4AI) is supported by investments made by IBM along with the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) and the University of São Paulo (USP). This AI centre -- C4AI has been established to tackle five significant challenges that are related to health, the environment, the food production chain, the future of work and the development of NLP technologies in Portuguese. Along with this, it will also aid in projects relating to human wellbeing improvement as well as initiatives focused on diversity and inclusion. The total investment in the AI centre will reach $20 million over the next ten years, which will be split among the investors. The USP will contribute $1 million to cover costs related to the physical set-up of the space, as well as over 70 lecturers and staff to run the centre.

'Hillbilly Elegy' author J.D. Vance responds to suggestion on'Tucker Carlson Tonight' The idea, mooted by some Democrats and liberals, of a South Africa-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission after President Trump's term of office of complete would be less about reconciliation than "revenge," author J.D. Vance told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Monday. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich tweeted Saturday that such a commission would "erase Trump's lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe." "This is torn from a page in a George Orwell novel ... because who can protest'truth and reconciliation'," stated Vance, the author of "Hillbilly Elegy." Vance added that the idea would not only damage the country, but shows how "whiny" liberal Democrats still are about Hillary Clinton's 2016 election loss. "Instead of trying to win the next election and moving on with the life of American democratic politics, they want to go backward and punish everybody," Vance said.

NVIDIA today announced that the Italian inter-university consortium CINECA -- one of the world's most important supercomputing centers -- will use the company's accelerated computing platform to build the world's fastest AI supercomputer. The new "Leonardo" system, built with Atos, is expected to deliver 10 exaflops of FP16 AI performance to enable advanced AI and HPC converged application use cases. Featuring nearly 14,000 NVIDIA Ampere architecture-based GPUs and NVIDIA Mellanox HDR 200 Gb/s InfiniBand networking, Leonardo will propel Italy as the global leader in AI and high performance computing research and innovation. Leonardo is procured by EuroHPC, a collaboration between national governments and the European Union to develop a world-class supercomputing ecosystem and exascale supercomputing in Europe, and funded by the European Commission through the Italian Ministry of University and Research. "The EuroHPC technology roadmap for exascale in Europe is opening doors for rapid growth and innovation in HPC and AI," said Marc Hamilton, vice president of solutions architecture and engineering at NVIDIA.

Radiology extenders who read chest X-rays save attending radiologists more time during the day than radiology residents do, potentially streamlining workflow and alleviating provider burnout. At least that has been the experience for researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. Radiologists in their department read more cases per hour when the drafts came from radiology extenders than from residents, resulting in nearly an hour – 51 minutes – of provider time saved each day. The authors shared their experience on Oct. 13 in the Journal of the American College of Radiology. "Interpreting these radiographs entails a disproportionate amount of work (eg., retrieving patient history, completing standard dictation templates, and ensuring proper communication of important findings before finalization of reports). Given low reimbursement rates for these studies, economic necessities push radiologists to provide faster interpretations, contributing to burnout," said the team led by Arijitt Borthakur, MBA, Ph.D., senior research investigator in the Perelman School of Medicine radiology department.

I had the pleasure of talking with futurist and the managing partner of ChangeistScott Smith recently about some of the biggest macro trends everyone should be aware of today. While these trends had already begun prior to the coronavirus pandemic, in many ways, they accelerated as the world fought to deal with the pandemic and now as we begin to build our post-COVID-19 world. Here are the six future trends he believes everyone should be ready for. The "decoupling" of economies had already started pre-COVID-19 with early indicators appearing five to 10 years ago, according to some thought leaders, but the pandemic certainly made it more clear how dependence on globalization could create vulnerabilities. Some of the world's major powers, such as the UK, the United States, Brazil, Russia, India, and parts of the European Union, had already started to favor nationalism.

Artificial intelligence, the latest facet of information technology, has gained increasing momentum and been widely applied in various sectors with tremendous potential, thus becoming a driving force of scientific and technological development during China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period. It has also injected new impetus into the digital economy and played a key role in bolstering high-quality development and accelerating the nation's push for industrial upgrading, experts said. According to the 13th Five-Year Plan, the country called for developing AI, with a focus on fostering the industrial ecology of AI and promoting the integration and application of AI into key industries and fields. In July 2017, the State Council, China's Cabinet, issued a plan that set benchmarks for the country's AI sector, with the value of core AI industries predicted to exceed 1 trillion yuan ($150 billion) and making the country one of the global leaders in AI innovation by 2030. China has made tremendous strides in AI over the past five years as it has outpaced the United States in the number of worldwide AI-related patent applications, said a report from a Ministry of Industry and Information Technology research unit. The report also pointed out that AI is considered an important direction for industrial upgrading, and the country's strategic plan for AI offers a broad space for the research and development of AI technologies and related industries.

Artificial intelligence is the new oil, and the governments or the countries that get the best datasets will unquestionably develop the best AI, the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center's chief technology officer said Oct. 15. Speaking on a panel about AI superpowers at the Politico AI Summit, Nand Mulchandani said AI is a very large technology and industry. "It's not a single, monolithic technology," he said. "It's a collection of algorithms, technologies, etc., all cobbled together to call AI." The United States has access to global datasets, and that's why global partnerships are so incredibly important, he said, noting the Defense Department launched the AI partnership for defense at the JAIC recently to have access to global datasets with partners, which gives DOD a natural advantage in building these systems at scale.

For quite a while, artificial intelligence and machine learning models are leveraged in the healthcare industry to improve patient outcomes.