Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to hit the road in an alternative fashion to driverless cars, thanks to an AI powered concept tyre from Goodyear. The tyre maker debuted the Eagle 360 Urban, a 3D printed sensor-leaden spherical tyre with feeds back road data into an AI'brain' allowing for the tyre to by dynamically adjusted to suit changing road conditions. Covered in a super-elastic polymer that acts as a form of bionic skin for the tyre, and a morphing tread, the Eagle 360 Urban can use actuators to dynamically change the tread design of the tyre without compromising its support of the vehicles it is connected to. This allows the tyre to be adjusted for different driving conditions on the fly, for example in wet conditions dimples can be added to the treads to provide extra grip, while in dry conditions the tyre can be smoothed out to allow for smoother driving. If the bionic skin is damaged, the tyre's sensors will detect the problem and prompt the tyre to rotate to avoid contact of the damaged section with the road, thereby reducing pressure on that section of the tyre and allowing a self-healing process to start through the use of material that react physically and chemically together to form monocular bonds to repair punctures.

Seven million years ago, the first ancestors of mankind appeared in Africa and seven million years later, as we speak, mankind's existence is being traced by archaeologists in South Africa, where they believe they are finding several missing links in our history. A history traced back to the first hominid forms. What is a hominid, I hear you say, and when did it exist? Well, way back when scientists believe that the Eurasian and American tectonic plates collided and then settled, creating a massive flat area in Africa, after the Ice Age. This new massive field was flat for hundreds of miles, as far as the eye could see, and the apes that inhabited this land suddenly found there were no trees to climb. This meant that the apes found it hard going thundering over hundreds of miles on their hands and feet, so they started to stand up to make it easier to move over the land. This resulted in a change in the wiring of the brain, which, over thousands of years, led to the early forms of what is now recognized as human. The first link to understanding this chain was the discovery of Lucy. Lucy--named after the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"--is the first skeleton that could be pieced together to show how these early human forms appeared on the African plains in the post-Ice Age world. The skeleton was found in the early 1970s in Ethiopia by paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and is an early example of the hominid australopithecine, dating back to about 3.2 million years ago. The skeleton presents a small skull akin to that of most apes, plus evidence of a walking gait that was bipedal and upright, similar to that of humans and other hominids. This combination supports the view of human evolution that bipedalism preceded an increase in brain size. Since Lucy was found, there have been many other astonishing discoveries in what is now called the "Cradle of Humankind" in South Africa, a Unesco World Heritage site.

More than a third of U.S. jobs could be at "high risk" of automation by the early 2030s, a percentage that's greater than in Britain, Germany and Japan, according to a report released Friday. The analysis by accounting and consulting firm PwC focused primarily on the economic outlook in Britain, but it included a section on automation in Britain and elsewhere. In the U.S., 38% of jobs could be at risk of automation, compared with 30% in Britain, 35% in Germany and 21% in Japan. The automation of factories is a big factor for job loss in the U.S. The automation of factories is a big factor for job loss in the U.S. The report emphasizes that these estimates are based on the anticipated capabilities of robotics and artificial intelligence by the early 2030s, and that the pace and direction of technological progress are "uncertain." The key issue is not that the U.S. has more jobs in sectors that are universally ripe for automation, the report says; rather, it's that more U.S. jobs in certain sectors are potentially vulnerable than, say, British jobs in the same sectors.

"Plant breeding is another interesting application we're pursuing, where robotically gathered plant phenotype data can be collected over much larger breeding experiments that current manual measurement techniques allow," said Kantor. "Machine learning tools can then combine the collected phenotype data with genetic and environmental data to help a breeders and geneticists better understand the relationships between genetics, environment, and plant performance." "This in turn accelerates the breeding process, allowing breeders to evaluate many more plants each season so that they can more quickly select for desirable traits such as yield or disease resistance," adds Kantor. Kantor says this kind of accelerated breeding program could have significant benefit in the developing world such as Subsaharan Africa. The FarmView initiative wants to develop inexpensive robotic systems that small- to medium-scale growers can afford to implement.

We have stopped thinking about AI as a domain for rocket scientists only. Last year was a hugely significant year for artificial intelligence. It was a year of spectacular achievement. For the first time a system was created with the ability to defeat a human at the impossibly strategic game of Go (a feat that has been 20 years in development). And it was the year in which deep learning became the buzzword because although neural network techniques have been used to teach machines for more than 30 years, the deep learning variant is the one that gives a machine second life.

NASA's highly experimental Earth Observing-1 satellite mission was supposed to last just a year. It did that, and then survived 16 more--all the while testing NASA's riskiest, oddball ideas. It's been a proving ground for everything from multi- and hyperspectral imagers, to a self-piloting AI. But EO-1 is finally out of fuel, and at the end of the month the craft's operating team will close up shop. Already out of fuel, EO-1 itself will continue to slowly shuffle off its orbital coil until it burns up in Earth's atmosphere.

The recent eruption of Erta Ale volcano in northeastern Ethiopia highlights the speed and impact of space artificial intelligence (A.I.). One of our planet's few exposed lava lakes is changing, and artificial intelligence is helping NASA understand how. On January 21, a fissure opened at the top of Ethiopia's Erta Ale volcano --one of the few in the world with an active lava lake in its caldera. Volcanologists sent out requests for NASA's Earth Observing 1 (EO-1) spacecraft to image the eruption, which was large enough to begin reshaping the volcano's summit. As it turned out, that spacecraft was already busy collecting data of the lava lake.

NHGRI medical geneticist Paul Kruszka explains that "Human malformation syndromes appear different in different parts of the world. Even experienced clinicians have difficulty diagnosing genetic syndromes in non-European populations." That's where facial recognition comes in. The NHGRI team studied the photographs of 101 participants with the rare disease from Africa, Asia and Latin America. They then developed a facial recognition tech that was able to correctly diagnose the condition 96.6 percent of the time during their trial runs.

Thanks to Vodafone, the Taurus-Littrow Valley will get its first mobile phone base station next year. It hasn't needed one up to now, as the last visitors drove through in 1972, the year before the mobile phone was invented. Next year, though, it will get the very latest in 4G LTE coverage, when it receives a visit from two very special self-driving vehicles. Taurus-Littrow is the landing site of Apollo 17, where humans last walked on the moon. Next year, an international group based in Berlin plans to send a mission carrying two lunar rovers to explore the site.

Legal research company Casetext has raised $12 million in a new round of funding. The money will be used to expand its software platform that offers insights into cases cited in legal documents and further develop CARA (Case Analysis Research Assistant), an AI-powered assistant for lawyers. Using natural language understanding, Casetext scans the text of legal briefs to locate and analyze case citations. The company also offers access to 10 million court cases and statutes annotated by a community of litigators. The $12 million funding round was led by Canvas Ventures, with participation from Union Square Ventures, 8VC, and Red Sea Ventures.