Goto

Collaborating Authors

 Africa


Flawed plan

BBC News

In 1960s and 70s Britain, immigrant ethnic minority children were dispersed across schools in the hope that it would help them integrate. The process saw children - largely of south Asian and African or Caribbean descent - being "bussed" out of their local areas to go to school. Eleven Local Area Authorities (LEAs) decided there should be no more than 30% of immigrants at any one school. It meant once that quota was reached, children were taken elsewhere. The process, which became known as "bussing", is now at the heart of a project in Bradford where Shabina Aslam is trying to trace children who, like herself, were sent to school away from where they lived.


Hungry penguins help keep car code safe

BBC News

Hungry penguins have inspired a novel way of making sure computer code in smart cars does not crash. Tools based on the way the birds co-operatively hunt for fish are being developed to test different ways of organising in-car software. The tools look for safe ways to organise code in the same way that penguins seek food sources in the open ocean. Experts said such testing systems would be vital as cars get more connected. Engineers have often turned to nature for good solutions to tricky problems, said Prof Yiannis Papadopoulos, a computer scientist at the University of Hull who developed the penguin-inspired testing system.


Military: First-known combat death since Trump in office

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's been described as the greatest burden any commander in chief must bear. Just days into his young presidency, a U.S. service member has died in military action authorized by Donald Trump. It's the first known combat death of a member of the U.S. military since Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20 and underscores the gravity of the decisions he now makes. Three service members were also wounded Sunday during the firefight with militants from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula's branch in Yemen. The raid left nearly 30 others dead, including an estimated 14 militants.


Military: First-known combat death since Trump in office

Associated Press

A U.S. military service member was killed Sunday during a raid against al-Qaida militants in central Yemen that also left nearly 30 others dead, including women and children. The loss of the service member is the first-known combat death of a member of the U.S. military under President Donald Trump. "Americans are saddened this morning with news that a life of a heroic service member has been taken in our fight against the evil of radical Islamic terrorism," Trump said in a statement. The U.S. has been striking al-Qaida in Yemen from the air for more than 15 years, mostly using drones, and Sunday's surprise pre-dawn raid could signal a new escalation against extremist groups in the Arab world's poorest but strategically located country. An al-Qaida official and an online news service linked to the terror group said the raid left about 30 people dead.


Military: First-known combat death since Trump in office

Associated Press

A U.S. military service member was killed Sunday during a raid against al-Qaida militants in central Yemen that also left nearly 30 others dead, including women and children. The loss of the service member is the first-known combat death of a member of the U.S. military under President Donald Trump. The U.S. has been striking al-Qaida in Yemen from the air for more than 15 years, mostly using drones, and Sunday's surprise pre-dawn raid could signal a new escalation against extremist groups in the Arab world's poorest but strategically located country. An al-Qaida official and an online news service linked to the terror group said the raid left about 30 people dead. Among the children killed was Anwar, the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Yemeni-American cleric killed in a U.S. airstrike in Yemen in 2011, according to the girl's grandfather.


Machine learning could finally crack the 4,000-year-old Indus script

#artificialintelligence

In 1872 a British general named Alexander Cunningham, excavating an area in what was then British-controlled northern India, came across something peculiar. Buried in some ruins, he uncovered a small, one inch by one inch square piece of what he described as smooth, black, unpolished stone engraved with strange symbols -- lines, interlocking ovals, something resembling a fish -- and what looked like a bull etched underneath. The general, not recognizing the symbols and finding the bull to be unlike other Indian animals, assumed the artifact wasn't Indian at all but some misplaced foreign token. The stone, along with similar ones found over the next few years, ended up in the British Museum. In the 1920s many more of these artifacts, by then known as seals, were found and identified as evidence of a 4,000-year-old culture now known as the Indus Valley Civilization, the oldest known Indian civilization to date. Since then, thousands more of these tiny seals have been uncovered.


Cognitive Computing Market Is Projected to Grow at a Healthy CAGR During 2016 - 2024 - Press Release - Digital Journal

#artificialintelligence

Persistence Market Research delivers pertinent insights on the growth of the Cognitive Computing Market and identifies key market dynamics impacting this growth. New York City, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/27/2017 -- In the ever changing world of information technology, business organizations are left with humongous amount of data with them. This data includes very critical information for business use, but business organizations are only able to utilize 20% of whole data available with them with the use of traditional data analytics technology. To process and interpret the reaming 80% of the data that is in the form of videos, images, and human voice (also called as dark data), there is a need of cognitive computing systems. Cognitive computing systems are typical combination of hardware and software that constitute natural language processing (NLP) and machine language, and have capability to collect, process, and interpret the dark data available with business organizations.


Gadget : Machine learning will go big and small in 2017

#artificialintelligence

Machine learning as a subset of Artificial Intelligence is an emerging trend in South Africa, with demand for data scientists rising sharply and university programmes incorporating the discipline in study programmes. The machine learning sector is really beginning to take form in South Africa with various start-ups taking off and entering the international scene. At DataProphet, we specialise in the application of machine learning algorithms to provide actionable solutions for a variety of industries. Having built a presence in the U.S. we have experienced the difference in industry trends first hand. South Africa's diverse range of spoken languages makes it difficult to use existing personal assistants, chatbots and speech recognition tools which were designed solely for the English language.


Views on $AI $VR $AR Bridge and Tunnel Investor

#artificialintelligence

Apparently Google Translate, the company's popular machine-translation service, had suddenly and almost immeasurably improved. Rekimoto visited Translate himself and began to experiment with it. He had to go to sleep, but Translate refused to relax its grip on his imagination. Rekimoto wrote up his initial findings in a blog post. First, he compared a few sentences from two published versions of "The Great Gatsby," Takashi Nozaki's 1957 translation and Haruki Murakami's more recent iteration, with what this new Google Translate was able to produce.


How MR and machine learning are driving innovation in farming

#artificialintelligence

Farming is, by far, the most mature industry mankind has created. Dating back to the dawn of civilization, farming has been refined, adjusted and adapted -- but never perfected. We, as a society, always worry over the future of farming. Today, we even apply terms usually reserved for the tech sector -- digital, IoT, AI and so on. So why are we worrying?