China's e-commerce boom has generated a huge logistics demand, both in terms of express package delivery and on-demand food delivery.a Chinese express firms delivered an estimated 40 billion parcels in 2017; up 28% from the previous year.2 Indeed, China's on-demand delivery market exceeded over 30 million food orders daily by yearend 2017.

China's research efforts in artificial intelligence (AI) began later than the U.S. and Europe. Early contributions in the 1970s included automated theorem proving, logic reasoning, search, and knowledge engineering. For example, Wen-tsün Wu is a pioneer in automated theorem proving. He received the State Preeminent Science and Technology Award in 2000, an honor bestowed on only 25 Chinese scientists across all fields to date. Bo Zhang and Ruqian Lu received the Life Achievement Award from the China Computer Federation (CCF) for their fundamental contributions respectively on problem solving and knowledge engineering.

China plans to become the world's high-tech leader, and quickly. In 2015, the Chinese government's State Council approved "Made in China 2025," an initiative designed to position China as a world leader in fields such as robotics, aviation, advanced information technology, and new-energy vehicles in less than a decade. In support of this governmental initiative, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) released a three-year action plana to drive growth in areas including smart drones, facial recognition, AI-supported medical diagnosis, speech recognition, and language translation. If successful, the initiative would grow China's AI industryb to a size of $150 billion by 2020, approximately 100 times its size in 2016. As China pushes AI forward, here are a few names, trends, and technologies to watch.

Apple, Google, and Samsung all have smart speakers. Not to be left behind, fellow smartphone titan Huawei is playing catch up with another budget contender, following the reveal of its AI Cube (a speaker, 4G modem, WiFi router hybrid and Google Home clone, all rolled into one). The company teased the new gadget -- the Chinese name of which translates as "Huawei AI Speaker" -- at its Mate 20 series event in Shanghai, China, earlier today. As first impressions go, there's the glaringly obvious: this device looks like a HomePod doppelgänger, complete with a stout, cylindrical design with control buttons at the top. It also comes in black and white.

When you are a world-renowned pioneer in smells, it's somewhat inevitable you will end up sticking your face into peculiar places: the burned rubber tire of a Chevy lowrider, a rotting hunk of wall insulation from an abandoned home, a cupped palmful of cool water from the Detroit River. It's also inevitable that the trailing documentary crew (sent by the local gallery behind your next odor-based installation) and photographer (sent, in this case, by Engadget) will home in on this money shot, jostling ahead of and around you to capture the famous nose in intimate proximity with prosaic, occasionally distasteful, objects. Along with these very words, those images are a critical way to visualize how Sissel Tolaas, who flew to Detroit from Berlin, does the unique fieldwork that has made her a legend in the colossal yet somewhat invisible world of modern olfaction. Yet there's also no denying that the sight of this -- the sniff shot, ubiquitous in casual Google image searches of Tolaas' name -- is not only curious but also comical. The idea of placing one's grown, adult face in close communion with the fluff spilling out of a blighted house to deeply inhale its surely unhealthy molecules and have them wash over you on an emotional level... well, it's something dogs do. But how else are we, with the linguistic and visual tools at our disposal, supposed to communicate what the great Sissel Tolaas is really about to you, the reader? Anyway, Tolaas hates being shadowed by cameras this way, although she's being a terrific sport about it. On her first day in Detroit, she arrives at a former tobacco factory in Poletown.

NEW DELHI: A Netherlands-based start-up has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) powered smartphone app for deaf and mute people, which it says offers a low-cost and superior approach to translating sign language into text and speech in real time. The easy-to-use innovative digital interpreter dubbed as "Google translator for the deaf and mute" works by placing a smartphone in front of the user while the app translates gestures or sign language into text and speech. The app, called GnoSys, uses neural networks and computer vision to recognise the video of sign language speaker, and then smart algorithms translate it into speech. Affordable and always available interpreter services are in huge demand in the deaf community. Every day thousands of local businesses around the globe face problems with providing their services to deaf, said Konstantin Bondar, Co-Founder & CTO of Evalk, the company which developed the app. According to the National Deaf Association (NAD), 18 million people are estimated to be deaf in India.

The Black Friday shopping event is a great chance to grab a bargain, but it can also open up golden opportunities for scammers and hackers. With deals constantly launching and expiring, you'll need to move quickly in order to get what you want. However, you still need to take the right measures to ensure you're not being duped. Here are some useful tips worth following this Black Friday. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.

Donald Trump has complained that fewer people are following him on Twitter, accusing the site of undermining him. Amid a series of unfolding crises, the president took to his Twitter account to complain that he had lost followers. He also appeared to suggest that the site is making it harder to follow him, for which there is no evidence. "Twitter has removed many people from my account and, more importantly, they have seemingly done something that makes it much harder to join - they have stifled growth to a point where it is obvious to all," he posted. "A few weeks ago it was a Rocket Ship, now it is a Blimp!

By Jackie Snow Judging by the breathless coverage, it can seem as if the only countries developing artificial intelligence are the United States and China. But while companies in those two countries are leading the way in cutting-edge research and products, it's still early for the industry and other nations are working hard to become major AI players. Here are six that could challenge the two juggernauts. SINGAPORE Singapore was one of the first countries to announce a national strategy, called AI Singapore, in May 2017. The initiative brings the government, research institutions and companies together to collaborate on research and speed up local adoption of AI, with $109 million to spend over five years.

Chinese scientists and clinicians have developed a learning artificial intelligence system which can diagnose and identify cancerous prostate samples as accurately as any pathologist. This holds out the possibility of streamlining and eliminating variation in the process of cancer diagnosis. It may also help overcome any local shortage of trained pathologists. In the longer term it may lead to automated or partially-automated prostate cancer diagnosis. Prostate cancer is the most common male cancer, with around 1.1m diagnoses ever year, worldwide1 (for comparison, that's around x4 the number of men who live in Copenhagen).