Where does true power reside? Is it waving at you from a stage-lit, Presidentially-sealed podium? Or tucked away inside a billionaire's wallet? Can you smell it in a mahogany-clad clubroom at Yale in the smoke of a Bonesman's cigar, or catch a glimpse of its dark feathers perching on the advisory council of a transnational bank? One thing we know for sure: the nature and location of power is changing, and the agents of that change are the Californian technology companies that have the taken the 21st century by the throat.

GE unveiled a machine data system for power plants it claims can increase a facility's efficiency of operation by 1.5%, reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 3%, and reduce coal consumption by 67,000 tons for each megawatt of electricity produced. GE's Digital Power Plant for Steam suite was introduced at the Minds Machines conference in Paris June 14, where GE executives also revealed the results of a hardware and software upgrade using the technology at the Chivasso power plant in Northern Italy. The plant, run by A2A Group, was restarted in November 2015 after a three-year shutdown. Digital Power Plant for Steam is one of the first application suites to sit atop GE's Predix machine data analytics platform and yield practical, industrial results. The reference to "steam" in the product's name reflects the fact that gas and coal-fired power plants produce steam to drive the turbines that generate electricity used in households and industry in most societies.

Abstract: A newly developed system might quickly assist to foretell the place poachers are more likely to strike in wildlife parks. USC pc scientist speaks at a White Home-sponsored workshop on expertise and social good. Poachers hunt tigers with traps and weapons. That prime-tech software is in improvement due to USC laptop scientist Milind Tambe, the Helen N. and Emmett H. Jones Professor in Engineering on the USC Viterbi College of Engineering. Since 2013, he's been working with worldwide businesses to check software program he hopes will sooner or later predict the place poachers are prone to strike inside wildlife parks.

The second "Computers Gone Wild: Impact and Implications of Developments in Artificial Intelligence on Society" workshop took place on February 19, 2016 at Harvard Law School. Marin Solja?i?, Max Tegmark, Bruce Schneier, and Jonathan Zittrain convened this informal workshop to discuss recent advancements in artificial intelligence research. Participants represented a wide range of expertise and perspectives and discussed four main topics during the day-long event: the impact of artificial intelligence on labor and economics, algorithmic decision-making, particularly in law, autonomous weapons, and the risks of emergent human-level artificial intelligence. Each session opened with a brief overview of the existing literature related to the topic from a designated participant, followed by remarks from two or three provocateurs. The session leader then moderated a discussion with the larger group.

The future of luxury cars will be entirely personalized, fully autonomous and exceedingly comfortable -- at least if Rolls Royce has anything to do with it. On Thursday, the venerable British automaker, which is now owned by BMW Group BMW, 0.53%, unveiled its first self-driving car, the Vision Next 100 concept car, a spectacularly ornate, futuristic land yacht that wouldn't look out of place in the sci-fi classic "Tron." At nearly 20 feet long and 5 feet tall, the car features a zero-emissions powertrain, glass canopy roof and virtually invisible wheels, which are tucked inside the sleek chassis (Got a flat? The robot will fix it). But it's inside where the Vision Next 100 really shines, sporting a silk sofa -- or as Rolls puts it, "a beautifully textured, ivory-coloured luxurious throne upon which our passengers are conveyed" -- deep wool carpet, hand-crafted Madagascar wood paneling and a big-screen TV.

Elon Musk has released video footage of SpaceX's latest landing attempt, in which the aerospace firm lost a Falcon 9 rocket. The Falcon 9 took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Wednesday, carrying two communications satellites into orbit. Looks like early liquid oxygen depletion caused engine shutdown just above the deck pic.twitter.com/Sa6uCkpknY Head of SpaceX, Elon Musk, has released video footage showing just how close the first stage of this week's rocket launch came to successfully landing on the floating barge. The Falcon 9 appeared to be on course for an upright landing before it was lost in clouds of smoke.

Navid Khonsari wants to make honest video games. Not just games that say something about the world, but games that draw on real events and bring a documentary approach to an interactive experience. "The 1979 Iranian Revolution is a defining moment in the twentieth century," he says. "The rifts it started define what the Middle East is now and what the West is. The moral decisions: who do you protect, who don't you protect?"

Whether you're reading this article on a smartphone, tablet or laptop, chances are the device in front of you contains components from at least six countries spanning three or more continents. Its sleek exterior belies the complicated and intricate set of internal parts that only a global supply chain can provide. Over the past century, finished products made in a single country have become increasingly hard to find as globalization -- weighted a term as it is -- has stretched supply chains to the ends of the Earth. Now, anything from planes, trains and automobiles to computers, cellphones and appliances can trace its hundreds of pieces to nearly as many companies around the world. And its assembly might take place in a different country still.

Their squishy robotic hands can gather coral samples more delicately than robots, and in places humans can't reach. Developed with support from a National Geographic Innovation Challenge Grant, the hands were first tested in tanks in March 2015 and then taken to the Red Sea in May. After a successful expedition, Wood and Gruber hope the technology may have even broader applications.

Recently, mobile operators in many developing economies have launched "Mobile Money" platforms that deliver basic financial services over the mobile phone network. While many believe that these services can improve the lives of the poor, a consistent difficulty has been identifying individuals most likely to benefit from access to the new technology. Here, we combine terabyte-scale data from three different mobile phone operators from Ghana, Pakistan, and Zambia, to better understand the behavioral determinants of mobile money adoption. Our supervised learning models provide insight into the best predictors of adoption in three very distinct cultures. We find that models fit on one population fail to generalize to another, and in general are highly context-dependent. These findings highlight the need for a nuanced approach to understanding the role and potential of financial services for the poor.