YellowHead has launched Alison, a machine learning technology that predicts how mobile advertising campaigns, known as paid user acquisition, will turn out. The Israeli startup helps mobile app and game developers get better results from ads. It specializes in paid user acquisition campaigns, app store optimization, and search engine optimization. And now it has added Alison to use machine learning to predict a campaign's performance in the hopes of uncovering more insights for brands and wasting less advertising money. Top university math professors at the Data Science Research Team at Tel Aviv University and the company's developers worked on Alison, which supplements human intelligence to optimize campaigns based on predicted results across multiple ad platforms such as Facebook and Google.

Peer review, evaluation, and selection is a fundamental aspect of modern science. Funding bodies the world over employ experts to review and select the best proposals of those submitted for funding. The problem of peer selection, however, is much more general: a professional society may want to give a subset of its members awards based on the opinions of all members; an instructor for a MOOC or online course may want to crowdsource grading; or a marketing company may select ideas from group brainstorming sessions based on peer evaluation. We make three fundamental contributions to the study of procedures or mechanisms for peer selection, a specific type of group decision-making problem, studied in computer science, economics, and political science. First, we propose a novel mechanism that is strategyproof, i.e., agents cannot benefit by reporting insincere valuations. Second, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our mechanism by a comprehensive simulation-based comparison with a suite of mechanisms found in the literature. Finally, our mechanism employs a randomized rounding technique that is of independent interest, as it solves the apportionment problem that arises in various settings where discrete resources such as parliamentary representation slots need to be divided proportionally.

We consider the problem of online subspace tracking of a partially observed high-dimensional data stream corrupted by noise, where we assume that the data lie in a low-dimensional linear subspace. This problem is cast as an online low-rank tensor completion problem. We propose a novel online tensor subspace tracking algorithm based on the CANDECOMP/PARAFAC (CP) decomposition, dubbed OnLine Low-rank Subspace tracking by TEnsor CP Decomposition (OLSTEC). The proposed algorithm especially addresses the case in which the subspace of interest is dynamically time-varying. To this end, we build up our proposed algorithm exploiting the recursive least squares (RLS), which is the second-order gradient algorithm. Numerical evaluations on synthetic datasets and real-world datasets such as communication network traffic, environmental data, and surveillance videos, show that the proposed OLSTEC algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art online algorithms in terms of the convergence rate per iteration.

The European Robotics League (ERL) announced the winners of ERL Emergency Robots 2017 major tournament, during the awards ceremony held on Saturday, 23rd September at Giardini Pro Patria, in Piombino, Italy. The ERL Emergency Robots 2017 competition consisted of four scenarios, inspired by the nuclear accident of Fukushima (Japan, 2011) and designed specifically for multi-domain human-robot teams. The first scenario is The Grand Challenge made up of three domains – sea, air, land, and the other three scenarios are made of only two domains. The Awards, given for each scenario to the best performing teams, were introduced by Alan Winfield from Bristol Robotics Laboratory and ERL Emergency Coordinator. "The energy, enthusiasm and spirit of cooperation among the teams competing in ERL Emergency was amazing. We witnessed not only great performances from the teams and their robots, but also the drama and excitement of last minute field repairs and workarounds to the robots", said Alan Winfield.

The oil and gas industry has always been seen as conservative and resistant to change but due to the recent drop in the oil prices, both the upstream and downstream companies are looking now at innovative ways to reduce CAPEX and increase production and safety to achieve operational excellence. The digital technologies and IIoT are seen as the main way to a varied range of key benefits. In a recent survey published by GBC, the keynote speakers of the IIoT and Digital Solutions for oil and gas conference (OMV, Eni, Petronas and Halliburton) have mentioned that the mind-set change in integrating the IT in the overall business strategy and the breakdown of cultural and technical silos will leverage the speed of the opportunities in this sector and will deeply transform the legacy operations. This has a direct impact on the skills required in the future in the oil and gas industry as well. It is a common agreement in the industry that Real time resource optimization, predictive maintenance, personalised service at the retails points and integration of the supply chain make a difference for both upstream and downstream operations.

A drone that can switch between flying and rolling could soon be exploring underground mines without the aid of a human pilot. In open air, drones can navigate autonomously using GPS, but these satellite signals don't penetrate deep underground, meaning robot spelunkers require human pilots. Ahmed AlNomany and his colleagues at Swedish company Inkonova are working on an alternative. "It's complicated because we are trying to invent another way of positioning using bits and pieces of technologies," says AlNomany. Having a view of its surroundings is the first step.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to disrupt the lives of individuals, the societies we live in, and the global economy, causing both excitement and trepidation. It goes beyond doubt that AI will automate tasks that have long required human labour. In fact, AI's unprecedented speed, accuracy and cost efficiency have encouraged CFOs to consider its adoption in the Finance and Accounting functions. This is especially true considering the scarcity of trained workforce and investment constraints to handle increasing volumes of data. Essentially, the finance professional is facing a changed paradigm where he/she needs to juxtapose their valuable judgement alongside AI's predictive results in a variety of settings.

Airline passengers are suffering major disruption at airports around the world after a computer programme which handles passenger check in systems crashed. Queues formed at check-in desks worldwide this morning after the computer system used by more than 100 airlines crashed. Problems have been reported at London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports, as well as Charles de Gaulle Paris, Washington DC, Baltimore, Melbourne, Changi in Singapore, Johannesburg and Zurich. The check-in system which went down is run by Amadeus Altea, which services 64% of the Star Alliance flights, 75% of One World and 53% of the Sky Team, including BA, AirFrance, KLM and Lufthansa. The company behind the programme confirmed a'network issue' is causing the problems, but insisted'services are gradually being restored'.

U.S. airstrikes across eastern Syria have hobbled Islamic State's deadly drone program, U.S. officials say, but commanders warn that proliferation of the inexpensive technology may allow terrorist groups to launch other aerial attacks around the globe. U.S.-backed fighters have reported small drones flown by the militants seven times this month in Iraq and Syria as Islamic State struggles to maintain the crumbling borders of its self-declared caliphate, according to the U.S. military task force in Baghdad. That's down from more than 60 drone sightings earlier this year, especially during the battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul, which was liberated in early July. Dozens of Iraqis were killed or wounded by 40-millimeter grenades and light explosives dropped from remote-controlled devices that one U.S. commander likened to killer bees. The use of camera-equipped quadcopters and model-plane-sized drones, sometimes flying in swarms, had become a signature tactic of Islamic State, much as the growing U.S. fleet of large missile firing Predator and Reaper drones have changed the face of modern warfare.

It'll be close, but it looks like women will be allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia with some time to spare before the automobile industry converts entirely to self-driving cars. A royal decree announced Tuesday that women would finally be allowed behind the wheel, heralding a preposterously overdue end to the most high-profile and infamous of the repressive kingdom's restrictions on women. While there are a few other Middle Eastern and conservative Islamic countries where driving by women is culturally or religiously frowned upon, Saudi Arabia is the last country on the planet that officially prohibited it. The government says it will first form a panel to look into implementing the order, then create the infrastructure it claims is necessary to put the order into effect. However, the order seems likely to be carried out.