Google has today launched a re-imagined version of its free Earth mapping service, weaving in storytelling and artificial intelligence. The new programme lets people get a close-up look of the planet from the comfort of their computers, smartphones or tablets. The new-look Google Earth enables its users to learn about far-flung corners of the globe under the guidance of scientists from Nasa and prestigious research institutions. Google Earth's new start-up screen offers a global view of the Earth. 'This is our gift to the world,' Google Earth director Rebecca Moore said.

Later today, an Atlas V rocket will blast off to the International Space Station bearing 7,600-odd pounds of food, water and other sundries to the astronauts on board. Nearly a third of that weight is equipment for science that furthers NASA's ability to explore space: a capsule that records how spacecraft break up on re-entry, an experiment that tests how fires behave in microgravity, a shiny new LED-powered plant growing habitat. But also tucked into the spacecraft's cargo hold are 38 CubeSats, diminutive satellites that are cheaper and easier to assemble than the behemoths rockets usually take into orbit. The ISS is a major launch platform for CubeSats--it has ejected more than 100 small payloads from companies and universities into orbit in the past few years. Those small sats will rely on new launch providers when the ISS retires in less than a decade. But this launch, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, will be business as usual; you can watch the livestream (now also in glorious 3D!) when it starts at 10 am Eastern, with the launch scheduled for 11:11 am.

From selfie authentication to finance tools that respond to emojis to computer-generated avatars that look and act like real people, new technological tools are giving digital banking a makeover. The April PYMNTS Digital Banking Tracker looks at the various ways technology is changing the digital banking landscape. Banks and FinTechs are rolling out several new technological banking solutions aimed at enticing a new generation of banking customers. With more millennial consumers joining the banking systems, companies are turning to the technologies this generation uses on a daily basis to help them deliver more modern banking solutions. From selfie authentication tools to emoji-based transactions to virtual assistants, the past few weeks saw several companies make new additions to the banking toolbox.

Samsung is blocking users from reconfiguring the Bixby button on the Galaxy S8. The company has made a number of ambitious claims about the virtual assistant, which is being marketed as one of the phone's key features. In a move designed to help establish Bixby as a genuine rival to Google Assistant, Samsung even decided to equip the S8 with a physical Bixby button. 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. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

Smule connects people all over the world to sing and create music together through our Sing! Our users feel that Sing! is like a home -- inclusive, honest and welcome. Because of this cozy feeling of home, our community has grown tremendously as an attractive home for people all over the world. Here's an example of how Sing! users share and enjoy each other's recordings: Recently, we are experiencing some growing pains. New users say that Sing! doesn't have that homey feeling anymore.

Tata Capital, the financial services arm of the Tata Group, unveiled its Artificial Intelligence (AI) based online Chatbot which, through its unique natural language and cognitive learning capabilities, understands and provides a response to individual online queries around its financial services products. Powered by a virtual agent (VA) engine, the online Chatbot represents a huge step forward by Tata Capital towards digitizing the customer journey, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The Chatbot is equipped to handle over 70% of the routine customer queries including product information, application tracking and sales & after-sales service. This will not only reduce the dependency on traditional customer servicing platforms, but also enable a better customer experience. The Chatbot's evolving data insights will also help Tata Capital track & measure customer queries, sentiments, satisfaction and more and will help Tata Capital devise a more customer-centric strategy.

In a soft-furnished studio space behind a warehouse in west Berlin, a group of international scientists are debating our robot future. An engineer from a major European carmaker is just finishing a cautiously optimistic progress report on self-driving vehicles. Increasingly, he explains, robot cars are learning to differentiate cars from more vulnerable moving objects such as pedestrians or cyclists. Some are already better than humans at telling apart different breeds of dog. "But of course," he says, "these are small steps."

David Mitchell pulls into the parking lot of the Desert Research Institute, an environmental science outpost of the University of Nevada, perched in the dry red hills above Reno. On this morning, wispy cirrus clouds draw long lines above the range. Mitchell, a lanky, soft-spoken atmospheric physicist, believes these frigid clouds in the upper troposphere may offer one of our best fallback plans for combating climate change. But Mitchell, an associate research professor at the institute, thinks there might be a way to counteract the effects of these clouds. It would work like this: Fleets of large drones would crisscross the upper latitudes of the globe during winter months, sprinkling the skies with tons of extremely fine dust-like materials every year. If Mitchell is right, this would produce larger ice crystals than normal, creating thinner cirrus clouds that dissipate faster.

Citation: Weng SF, Reps J, Kai J, Garibaldi JM, Qureshi N (2017) Can machine-learning improve cardiovascular risk prediction using routine clinical data? This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The authors will make their data available upon specific requests subject to the requestor obtaining ethical and research approvals from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink Independent Scientific Advisory Committee (https://www.cprd.com/intro.asp) at the UK Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Agency. Funding: This paper presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research School for Primary Care Research (NIHR SPCR): personal training fellowship award for SW from 2015-2018. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR, the NHS, or the Department of Health.

In February of 1880, the whaling ship Hope sailed north from Peterhead, Scotland, and headed for the Arctic. Her crew included a highly regarded captain, an illiterate but gifted first mate, and the usual roster of harpooners, sailors, and able-bodied seamen--but not the intended ship's surgeon. That gentleman having been unexpectedly called away on family matters, a last-minute substitute was found, in the form of a middling third-year medical student making his maiden voyage: a young man by the name of Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle was twenty when he left Peterhead and twenty-one when he returned. On Saturday, May 22nd, in the meticulous diary he kept during that journey, he wrote, "A heavy swell all day. I came of age today. Rather a funny sort of place to do it in, only 600 miles or so from the North Pole." Funny indeed, for a man who would come to be associated with distinctly un-Arctic environments: the gas-lit glow of Victorian London, the famous chambers at 221B Baker Street, and--further afield, but not much--the gabled manors and foggy moors where Sherlock Holmes tracked bloody footprints and dogs failed to bark in the night. Shortly after returning from the north, and long before writing any of the stories that made him famous, Conan Doyle told two tales about the Arctic--one fictional, the other putatively true. The first, in 1883, was "The Captain of the Pole-Star," one of his earliest published short stories. In it, a young medical student serving as the surgeon on a whaling ship watches, first in disbelief and then in dread, as his captain goes mad. Although winter is closing in, the captain sails northward into the Arctic until his ship is stuck fast.