An agtech company from the Netherlands is about to make landfall on U.S. soil with a new technology it says could change the way farmers manage soil fertility. With its initiatives Springg and SoilCares, the company, Dutch Sprouts, works with Talend, a big data integration company, to blend a mix of hardware and software to gather and analyze soil samples around the globe. It all starts with a handheld scanner that allows farmers to analyze soils on the go, according to Angelique van Helvoort, head of marketing and communications with Dutch Sprouts. "You simply scan the soil and transfer it to our database," she says. "Within minutes, a readout and fertilizer advice is sent to the user's smartphone.

I make no excuses for my fanboy reactions to Bill Gates. The man was a hero to me when he ran Microsoft full-time, and he's gone on to do even better things since. His most recent musing was on the subject of how we solve the impending problem of robots taking human jobs. Gates suggests that the answer is to tax them like humans. The video for this is on Quartz, along with a written interview if you'd like to see it in its original form.

White guilt is a sudden-onset disease that can affect the brain's empathy centers (leading patients to process nothing from other people's perspectives), the frontal lobe (patients may purchase a thousand-dollar safety pin), and sight (patients are often unable to see color). Effects vary based on several factors, such as the number of "Atlanta" episodes watched and the number of "Gilmore Girls" mugs owned. Some patients display mild symptoms (righteous-anger-induced indigestion on Thanksgiving; overpronouncing Mindy Kaling's name; insistent misuse of the word "intersectional"). Treatment for these symptoms can be purchased over the counter. More severe cases can involve cognitive-dissonance-induced seizures when faced with, for example, a really good "Inside Amy Schumer" sketch.

Bono and The Edge are excited by Nuritas' potential for impact and profitability. Try to imagine walking into your local grocery store ten years from now. You head towards the back, as you've done countless times before, to snatch a handful of your favorite cereal bars. Only this time, the packaging looks a bit different. You notice that there are two new versions, each with a label below the brand name.

The retail space is changing drastically through the evolution of technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), which can offer retailers better control over stock flows and better customer service. This technology, and in particular machine learning, can step in to help retailers cater to the needs of their customers in smarter ways. Retail goods, even the most niche products, are becoming more and more commoditised and price parity means retailers have to look continuously for more innovative ways to keep customers loyal. A high-end jewellery retailer, a sporting goods store and a grocer all have very different target markets and their customer's behaviour patterns are very different, but the beauty of machine learning, an emerging technology, is that it quickly adapts to any type of environment. Machine learning is a form of AI that allows computers to learn without being programmed.

Bono and The Edge are excited by Nuritas' potential for impact and profitability. Try to imagine walking into your local grocery store ten years from now. You head towards the back, as you've done countless times before, to snatch a handful of your favorite cereal bars. Only this time, the packaging looks a bit different. You notice that there are two new versions, each with a label below the brand name.

Mumbai: Data scientists have begun betting on the use of machine learning, deep learning, Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to help in the early detection of diseases and advance healthcare. Leading the way on the road to healthcare analytics are the world's five largest medical device companies--Johnson & Johnson, GE Healthcare, Siemens, Medtronic and Philips Healthcare. In the case of Dutch electronics, healthcare and lighting company, Philips NV, much of such innovative work is being done at the Philips Innovation Campus (PIC) in Bengaluru. PIC, according to the centre's chief executive Srinivas Prasad, initially started as a software centre in 1996, and has now developed into a product engineering site with a focus on delivering innovations for local and global markets. "Engineers and domain experts work on end-to-end products and solutions across the health continuum, from healthy living, to prevention, diagnosis and treatment. PIC is harnessing the power of technologies such as mobile, digital, cloud and Big Data analytics to improve patient outcomes through care coordination and patient empowerment. PIC takes pride in developing solutions to make healthcare affordable and accessible in India and other growth geographies like Africa and Indonesia," said Prasad.

When Worlds Collide, the 1951 Sci Fi film, painted a rather gloomy vision of the future of mankind on earth. However, the prospects for blended reality, in which the physical and digital worlds collide, couldn't be more promising. By fusing the virtual and real worlds, the possibilities are endless. By eliminating filters and limitations, blended reality enables expression at the speed of thought to improve experiences and inspire new technology. Using healthcare as an example, blended reality has significant implications for more personalized care, prevention and treatment by converging human biology, real-world context and technology advancements.

Leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and the surging popularity of messaging apps, conversational interfaces are enabling unprecedented banking engagement and re-establishing relationship banking. Chatbots are a simple, lightweight solution to a host of legacy banking problems, giving progressive banks and credit unions a competitive industry edge. The arrival of the digital age has disrupted the retail banking industry and altered the relationship between banks and their customers. Where banking once meant interacting with customers in brick-and-mortar branches, new digital banking channels like websites and mobile apps have opened an entirely new way to reach customers and do business. Online and mobile banking have allowed banks to reach customers more easily and frequently, and have given customers unprecedented access to their financial information.

Every year, we are confronted with new facts and scenarios emerging out of climate change and global warming, each more terrifying and apocalyptic than the last. In fact, several well-known scientists and tech moguls have made predictions regarding them. Prominent linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky said last year that the COP22 Marrakech climate summit in Morocco, which began on Nov. 7, "basically ceased" to function on Nov.9 after the delegates were confronted with the news that Donald Trump was elected as the next U.S. president. Speaking to over 2,000 people at Riverside Church on Dec. 5, Chomsky also made several related climate change predictions. "The question that was left was whether it would be possible to carry forward this global effort to deal with the highly critical problem of environmental catastrophe, if the leader of the free world, the richest and most powerful country in history, would pull out completely, as appeared to be the case," Chomsky said.