An ecologist and an astronomer collaborated to count the endangered animals in South Africa, and drones were being used to perform this task. Drones equipped with infrared cameras combined with computer-vision and machine-learning techniques helped in identifying the animals. Serge Wich, the ecologist and Steven Longmore, the astronomer both from the Liverpool John Moores University in England came up with this idea and contributed to the conservation and fight against poaching. The drones equipped with thermal cameras can spot the heat signature of animals and the software recognizes the animals based on their shape. The team latest findings were presented by Claire Burke, an astrophysicist at the University.

More than 300 million people around the world depend on drinking water extracted from the sea, but turning saltwater into freshwater isn't always efficient. Computer pioneer Alan Turing had an idea more than 50 years ago that is just now being put to use to improve the process. Two basic desalination methods exist: boil sea water and collect the evaporated pure water, or pump sea water through membranes that extract the salt. This process, called reverse osmosis, is favoured everywhere except in the Middle East, where boiling is cheaper.

The UPS Foundation is expanding its work with Zipline and Gavi, to leverage drones to deliver lifesaving blood, medicines and vaccines to remote communities. Zipline is a California-based robotics company and Gavi is the Vaccine Alliance, and the global partnership with the two has resulted in more than 4000 drone deliveries expediting over 7000 units of blood to remote hospitals across Rwanda. "This groundbreaking partnership with Gavi and Zipline provides access to lifesaving medical supplies in only minutes, rather than hours, for millions of men, women and children in need," says Eduardo Martinez, President of the UPS Foundation. "With this expansion, the reach of drone program will double from 6 million to 12 million people across Rwanda," added Martinez.

You may know Airbus as that Boeing competitor that also makes planes, but the European company is in fact an defense and aerospace giant that makes helicopters, satellites, and drones, and now it's using its aircraft not just to move people, but to give those on the ground a whole new view from the skies. A year-old effort called Airbus Aerial will seek to serve climate modelers, farmers, city planners, engineers, first responders, and anybody else who needs a a particular view of the world. The company combines data from observation satellites (of which Airbus is the largest global operator), manned planes with cameras slung underneath, and drones, to get to the places others can't reach. Airbus Aerial packages it all up, and presents it neatly to the customer, via a cloud-based interface. "It's a very complex thing to just say'I need satellite data'," says Jesse Kallman, president of the company.

When it comes to any kind of Artificial Intelligence device, swear words are usually off the menu. But one Reddit user has revealed a way to get Apple's Siri to say the F word. Taking to the r/Apple subreddit, user thatwasabaddecision wrote: 'Ask Siri to define the word "mother". When she asks you: "Do you wanna hear the next one?" F bomb: A Reddit user has taken to the r/Apple subreddit to reveal a way to get Apple's Siri to say the F word Mother's the word: Using the Oxford English dictionary, which offers several interpretations of the word'mother', Siri also includes the'vulger slang' word'motherf*cker' Redditor Hahahahahaimsofunny was the first to respond with the answer, and wrote: 'Motherf**ker!' Apple appears to have programmed Siri using the Oxford English dictionary, which offers several interpretations of the word'mother'.

ABU DHABI – Japan and its top trade partner in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates, agreed on Monday to expand economic, political and defense cooperation. Tokyo and Abu Dhabi also signed an investment protection agreement, capping off a two-day visit by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the oil-rich Gulf state. Abe arrived late Sunday on the first leg of a Middle East tour that will also take him to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. In a joint statement, the two countries praised growing trade between them. They "stressed the importance of further enhancing trade, investments, and business such as renewable energy, sustainable water desalination … artificial intelligence, health care and medical equipment," the statement said.

"Our guiding principles are: Innovation, Collaboration, and Excellence," said Joel Amoussou, Founder and Director of Atlantic AI Labs . Mr. Amoussou has over 23 years of experience in providing consulting services to Fortune 500 companies in the US and Canada and is a member of the US-based Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The use of AI in healthcare will help alleviate the shortage of specialist physicians in Africa. For example, cancer incidence and mortality rates in Africa are increasing rapidly. AI can be used to analyze patients' clinical data and automatically deliver personalized care recommendations based on globally accepted evidence-based clinical practice guidelines while leveraging the widespread use of smartphones in Africa.

Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing 104, 19-35.

In the last years, deep learning algorithms have highly revolutionized several areas including speech, image and natural language processing. The specific field of Machine Translation (MT) has not remained invariant. Integration of deep learning in MT varies from re-modeling existing features into standard statistical systems to the development of a new architecture. Among the different neural networks, research works use feedforward neural networks, recurrent neural networks and the encoder-decoder schema. These architectures are able to tackle challenges as having low-resources or morphology variations. This manuscript focuses on describing how these neural networks have been integrated to enhance different aspects and models from statistical MT, including language modeling, word alignment, translation, reordering, and rescoring. Then, we report the new neural MT approach together with a description of the foundational related works and recent approaches on using subword, characters and training with multilingual languages, among others. Finally, we include an analysis of the corresponding challenges and future work in using deep learning in MT.

Ascott Limited, a mid-market serviced apartments provider with 40,000 residences across the US, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, is in discussions with two Dubai-based robotics firms as it looks to use robots to conduct basic services at its properties, such as bringing clean towels to its guests. "Ascott is exploring new technologies across the serviced residence sector as automation becomes an integral part of business," said Vincent Miccolis, Ascott's regional general manager for the Middle East, Africa and Turkey. If a deal is reached with one of the firms – unlikely to happen until next year, Mr Miccolis told The National – Ascott would start commissioning the production of small-scale robots to deploy across its portfolio. "The idea is not to replace our staff," he added, during the ATM travel conference in Dubai, "but to complement their work and make operations even more efficient." Ascott has been orchestrating tests in China in conjunction with a Chinese robotics firm, which have shown that the proposed type of robots it would use can move around independently within the properties, including in elevators.