A 600-meter plastic-sweeper set to head to the Pacific Ocean to clean up the notorious floating Great Garbage Patch is finally ready for launch, its makers have revealed. The gigantic'pac man' system consists of a 600-meter-long floating tube that sits at the surface of the water, with a tapered 3-meter-deep skirt attached below to catch plastic waste. It harnesses the power of wind and surface waves to autonomously sweep through the area, gathering up plastic waste as it goes. The gigantic'pac man' system consists of a 600-meter-long floating tube that sits at the surface of the water, with a tapered 3-meter-deep skirt attached below to catch plastic waste'On September 8, we will launch the world's first ocean cleanup system from our assembly yard in Alameda, through the San Francisco Bay, toward the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch,' organisers revealed. The team has spent six months building the contraption.

Scuba diving archaeologists are scouring the seabed where a gas pipeline is being built off Israel's coast in a bid to preserve ancient relics. The area lies near a 5,000-year-old port which once was a key trade hub for the Mediterranean's ancient civilisations. Scientists say the vestiges of marine traders throughout the ages - from the Phoenicians to the Romans - lie hidden beneath the seabed at the port of Dor. They have already found earthenware jugs, anchors and the remains of wrecked ships, setting new guidelines for similar future projects. Underwater robots are scouring the seabed where a gas pipeline is being built off Israel's coast in a bid to preserve ancient relics.

Stretchable plant wearables and smart tags dropped by drones aim to help give farming a big data makeover. The relatively cheap technologies for mass monitoring of individual plants across large greenhouses or crop fields could get field tests in three countries starting in 2019. The idea came from researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia with expertise in flexible electronics. After talking with colleagues who were cultivating genetically engineered plants in greenhouses, they recognized the need for inexpensive sensors that could be deployed en masse and report on individual plant conditions. Their early offerings include a stretchable sensor for measuring micrometer-level changes in plant growth and a "PlantCopter" temperature and humidity sensor designed to be dropped from a drone and corkscrew its way through the air for a gradual descent.

We've come a long way since the term artificial intelligence (AI) was coined by AI luminary John McCarthy at Dartmouth in 1955. Sixty-three years later, AI is transforming healthcare, fintech, and other industries across the spectrum. While the quest for a truly humanlike AI continues, advancements in big data and machine learning (ML) have helped AI go mainstream. According to Accenture, the U.S. AI healthcare market is projected to reach $6.6 billion by 2021--a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40 percent. Medical imaging and diagnostic companies are fueling much of AI's growth in health tech. For example, Arterys, a cloud-based AI assistant for radiologists, received FDA clearance for analyzing images of lung and liver tumors with its Oncology AI suite in February 2018.

An artificial synaptic device has been developed which can mimic the function of nerve cells and synapses that are responsible for memory in human brains. The research team, led by Director Dr Myoung-Jae Lee from the Intelligent Devices and Systems Research Group at DGIST, included joint research teams led by Professor Gyeong-Su Park from Seoul National University; Professor Sung Kyu Park from Chung-ang University; and Professor Hyunsang Hwang from POSTEC. The teams developed a highly reliable, artificial synaptic device with multiple values by structuring tantalum oxide – a trans-metallic material – into two layers of Ta2O5-x and TaO2-x, and by controlling its surface. This electrical synaptic device stimulates the function of synapses in the brain, as the resistance of the tantalum oxide gradually increases or decreases depending on the strength of the electric signals. It has succeeded in overcoming durability limitations of current devices by allowing current control only on one layer of Ta2O5-x.

Big Data has been a focus for DG Competition for the last few years. In particular, the Commission has been interested in mergers involving the acquisition of a company holding valuable data, even if it has low turnover (see here). Apple's $400 million acquisition of Shazam, approved by the Commission on 6 September 2018, falls squarely within this category. Shazam is a music recognition app. Consumers can use Shazam to record a clip of an unknown song playing in a bar or other public place – Shazam turns this into an audio fingerprint and matches this against its database containing the audio fingerprints for millions of songs in order to identify the song playing.

Japan wants to commercialize flying vehicles as early as the 2020s through a government- backed campaign that already has recruited the likes of Subaru, Uber and Boeing. The country's powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry launched the project last month with a meeting that pulled together public agencies and private industry. The flight of fancy comes amid Japan's concern that its auto industry was caught flat-footed in other emerging global technology trends such as autonomous driving and ride-hailing. The government wants Japan to have a leading role when it comes to personal flying vehicles. "Globally, there is a growing interest in what is called'flying cars' that will enable such transportation services in the sky," the trade ministry said in a statement after the first meeting.

The phrase "loose lips might sink ships" warned, on American wartime posters, of unguarded conversations during the Second World War. Now, 73 years on from Victory over Japan Day on September 2, 1945, the formal conclusion of that horrific epoch, a similarly sloppy attitude to cybersecurity in the workplace can torpedo organisations. A well-cast "phish" – a fraudulent attempt to hook sensitive data such as usernames, passwords and codes – is capable of inflicting fatal financial and repetitional damage. "Successful phishing attacks can sink companies as well as individuals," says Juliette Rizkallah, chief marketing officer at identity software organisation SailPoint, updating the famous idiom. Fraud is endemic in the digital age.

This is an update of technology demo by Idein Inc. (Watch our 1 year progress.

An unmanned automobile competes in the i-VISTA (Intelligent Vehicle Integrated Systems Test Area) Autonomous Driving Challenge on August 18 in Chongqing, China. An unmanned automobile competes in the i-VISTA (Intelligent Vehicle Integrated Systems Test Area) Autonomous Driving Challenge on August 18 in Chongqing, China. For many, if not most Americans, the idea of a world in which we don't drive cars is a distant and possibly unlikely future. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. When autonomous, or self-driving cars make headlines, it's often for all the wrong reasons: yet another Tesla public scandal; an accident during an autonomous test drive; or the laughably terrifying face of the new autonomous Jaguar.