Google has today launched a re-imagined version of its free Earth mapping service, weaving in storytelling and artificial intelligence. The new programme lets people get a close-up look of the planet from the comfort of their computers, smartphones or tablets. The new-look Google Earth enables its users to learn about far-flung corners of the globe under the guidance of scientists from Nasa and prestigious research institutions. Google Earth's new start-up screen offers a global view of the Earth. 'This is our gift to the world,' Google Earth director Rebecca Moore said.

In shows like HBO's "Westworld" and AMC's "Humans," Hollywood pits robots, with artificial intelligence, against humans. Half a century ago, a science fiction film about a space mission planted the first seeds of doubt about just how the human race could coexist with man-made sentient beings. "Consider the fictional robot HAL in '2001: A Space Odyssey,' " said Ken Ford, a computer scientist and founder and CEO of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, in Pensacola, which has won awards for its robotics innovations. HAL eventually turned on its master in that classic film, sending shivers down the spines of moviegoers everywhere. Some of that wariness about artificial intelligence still exists, but Ford said the fear is unwarranted, and in the case of fictional robots, misplaced.

No one doubts that artificial intelligence has unimaginable potential. Within the next couple of years, it will revolutionize every area of our life, including medicine. Although many have their fears and doubts about AI taking over the world, Stephen Hawking even said that the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. However, I am fully convinced if humanity prepares appropriately for the AI-age, artificial intelligence will prove to be the next successful area of cooperation between humans and machines. Concerning healthcare, artificial intelligence will redesign it completely – and for the better.

David Mitchell pulls into the parking lot of the Desert Research Institute, an environmental science outpost of the University of Nevada, perched in the dry red hills above Reno. On this morning, wispy cirrus clouds draw long lines above the range. Mitchell, a lanky, soft-spoken atmospheric physicist, believes these frigid clouds in the upper troposphere may offer one of our best fallback plans for combating climate change. But Mitchell, an associate research professor at the institute, thinks there might be a way to counteract the effects of these clouds. It would work like this: Fleets of large drones would crisscross the upper latitudes of the globe during winter months, sprinkling the skies with tons of extremely fine dust-like materials every year. If Mitchell is right, this would produce larger ice crystals than normal, creating thinner cirrus clouds that dissipate faster.

The coming five years will see a sweeping shift in how businesses prioritize and process activities and tasks. Current technologies and ways of doing things will become obsolete. Ways of accessing information will change too as more businesses embrace assistants powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Marketing automation will come to the fore, and businesses will worry less about errors as AI-powered technology takes on more of the work around calculations. We explore some of the dramatic changes businesses can anticipate with Artur Kiulian, an expert in artificial intelligence.

Rio de Janeiro's police force, like the rest of the city's public services, is broke. In the headquarters of the bomb-disposal unit, supplies of everything from soap to explosives are running out as the city struggles to pay its debts amid Brazil's deep recession. But, poor as it is, Rio's bomb squad is one of the most technologically advanced in South America. In the cramped storeroom of its base in northern Rio, a state-of-the-art robot takes pride of place. "The robot is a fundamental piece of equipment--it's vital to our day-to-day work," says the bomb squad's boss, Marcelo Corrêa.

The'rise of the robots' could trigger a fresh wave of migration as jobs in developing countries are automated, the head of the World Bank has warned. More widespread access to the internet could also fuel flows as people will be able to see how wealthy other parts of the globe are, according to Jim Yong Kim. The economist made the grim prediction as he urged progress on stamping out poverty around the world. World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said wealthier countries were also starting to're-shore' jobs as automation slashed costs However, a new generation of machines including robots and 3D printers meant far fewer staff would be needed in future. Dr Kim, president of the Washington-based organisation, said wealthier countries were also starting to're-shore' jobs as automation slashed costs.

Boosting as gradient descent algorithms is one popular method in machine learning. In this paper a novel Boosting-type algorithm is proposed based on restricted gradient descent with structural sparsity control whose underlying dynamics are governed by differential inclusions. In particular, we present an iterative regularization path with structural sparsity where the parameter is sparse under some linear transforms, based on variable splitting and the Linearized Bregman Iteration. Hence it is called \emph{Split LBI}. Despite its simplicity, Split LBI outperforms the popular generalized Lasso in both theory and experiments. A theory of path consistency is presented that equipped with a proper early stopping, Split LBI may achieve model selection consistency under a family of Irrepresentable Conditions which can be weaker than the necessary and sufficient condition for generalized Lasso. Furthermore, some $\ell_2$ error bounds are also given at the minimax optimal rates. The utility and benefit of the algorithm are illustrated by several applications including image denoising, partial order ranking of sport teams, and world university grouping with crowdsourced ranking data.

Equipped with a state-of-the-art thermal camera, the drone crisscrossed the field, scanning it for cool, soggy patches where a gopher may have chewed through the buried drip irrigation line and caused a leak. In the drought-prone West, where every drop of water counts, California farmers are in a constant search for ways to efficiently use the increasingly scarce resource. Cannon Michael is putting drone technology to work on his fields at Bowles Farming near Los Banos, 120 miles southeast of San Francisco. About 2,100 companies and individuals have federal permission to fly drones for farming, according to the drone industry's Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. Federal regulators planned to relax the rules Monday on commercial drones, a move that could spur even greater use of such aircraft on farms. Michael is descended from Henry Miller, a renowned cattle rancher, farmer and Western landowner who helped transform semi-arid central California into fertile farmland 150 years ago by building irrigation canals, some still flowing today.

Facebook's Perfect, Impossible Chatbot Facebook is quietly trying to develop the most useful virtual assistant ever, in a project that illustrates the current limitations of artificial intelligence. Amazon's Alexa can summon an Uber and satisfy a four-year-old's demand for fart noises. Siri can control your Internet-connected thermostat. Each serve millions of users each day. But a lucky group of around 10,000 people, mostly in California, know that Facebook's assistant, named M, is the smartest of the bunch.