In Australia last week, the banking industry was focussed on a parliamentary inquiry into the industry's culture and response to a range of issues from customer complaints to pricing to market behaviour. Meanwhile, in the United States, technology services giant IBM bought Promontory Financial Group, a specialist risk-management consultancy. Promontory had been mentioned back in Australia, not because of IBM, but because it has been overseeing the remediation program Commonwealth Bank of Australia is running to compensate customers given inappropriate financial advice. Founded by a former US regulator, Promontory is recognised as one of the world's leading firms in regulatory compliance, risk management and risk culture. While Promontory has a significant role in Australia and globally (particularly with the ongoing fallout from the financial crisis and the cultural challenges facing banks) the IBM deal is potentially vastly more significant.

Life and stories are so closely intertwined that, at times, it's hard to know where one ends and the other begins. On Flipboard, stories flow from one to the next, weaving a rich tapestry that does an amazing job of showcasing all that life has to offer. The Galaxy Note 7 was the best phone available when it was released in August. A culmination of all of the company's strongest technologies to date, coupled with some fascinating new arrivals, Samsung somehow made the whole thing work in harmony, fit into a beautifully crafted 5.7-inch design. Even a war as pitiless as Syria's can have a low point.

It could be the ultimate upgrade for the discerning tank owner - a kit that makes your vehicle entire remote controlled. General Dynamics, the maker of the Abrams tank and the Stryker armoured fighting vehicle, has revealed a partnership to do just that. It is working with Kairos Autonomi, to create a simple plug in kit that could let army bosses upgrade their tanks, troop carriers and virtually any other vehicle. The M1 Abrams is an American third-generation main battle tank named after General Creighton Abrams, former Army chief of staff and commander of United States military forces in the Vietnam War from 1968 to 1972. Weighing nearly 62 metric tons, it is one of the heaviest main battle tanks in service.

Principal component regression (PCR) is a widely used two-stage procedure: principal component analysis (PCA), followed by regression in which the selected principal components are regarded as new explanatory variables in the model. Note that PCA is based only on the explanatory variables, so the principal components are not selected using the information on the response variable. In this paper, we propose a one-stage procedure for PCR in the framework of generalized linear models. The basic loss function is based on a combination of the regression loss and PCA loss. An estimate of the regression parameter is obtained as the minimizer of the basic loss function with a sparse penalty. We call the proposed method sparse principal component regression for generalized linear models (SPCR-glm). Taking the two loss function into consideration simultaneously, SPCR-glm enables us to obtain sparse principal component loadings that are related to a response variable. However, a combination of loss functions may cause a parameter identification problem, but this potential problem is avoided by virtue of the sparse penalty. Thus, the sparse penalty plays two roles in this method. The parameter estimation procedure is proposed using various update algorithms with the coordinate descent algorithm. We apply SPCR-glm to two real datasets, doctor visits data and mouse consomic strain data. SPCR-glm provides more easily interpretable principal component (PC) scores and clearer classification on PC plots than the usual PCA.

Google has hired comedy writers from Pixar and The Onion in a bid to make its smart assistant more likeable. It hopes to use their talent to'infuse personality' into its AI helper, which will be used in the firm's new Pixel phones, Duo app and Home speaker. The ultimate goal is to make users feel more emotionally connected to their personal software agent and the firm believes a livelier disposition could make this happen. In a world of order-taking machines, Google Assistant aims to be a comedian. The search giant has recently hired comedy writers from Pixar and The Onion, a satire newspaper, in order to'infuse personality' into its virtual assistant that will live in Google Home (pictured) Earlier this month, Google unveiled its Pixel smartphones and eagerly awaited Home speaker that will both be designed with the smart assistant.

It's a question you might never have considered before – why do older siblings do better on IQ tests than their younger counterparts? But if you want to get into Oxford's experimental psychology program, you'd better be prepared to answer. The university has released a series of questions from tutors who conduct the infamous interviews, revealing the complex problems in everything from mathematics to medicine used to spot the sharpest candidates. Oxford has released a series of questions from tutors who conduct the infamous interviews, revealing the complex problems in everything from mathematics to medicine used to spot the sharpest candidates. Oxford has revealed five interview questions spanning Modern Languages, Medicine, Philosophy, Maths, and Experimental Psychology.

Here are the largest device recalls in the past 20 years. This handout photo taken and released by Gwangju Bukbu Police Station on Sept. 13, 2016, shows a blown-up Samsung Galaxy Note7 smartphone in Gwangju, 270 kms south of Seoul. The owner claims he received burn injuries on a finger while attempting to extinguish his burning phone after he was jolted from his bed by the sound of an explosion early Sept. 13. SAN FRANCISCO -- Troubles with Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 phones put the South Korean company at the head a long line of companies that have faced major tech recalls. Some go back to the beginnings of the personal computer era, with many linked to overheating and fire danger from malfunctioning lithium ion batteries.

Investments in the future will be based on algorithms and patterns charted by robot. Emerging as one of the hot sectors in fintech, robo-advisory can come across as the next big disruption in the space. According to YourStory Research, there are close to 50 Indian early-stage startups flocking around this sector. A Deloitte research paper states that the top 11 firms in this segment globally have seen explosive growth since market entry, managing close to 19 billion Assets Under Management (AUM) in 2014. This disruption in the personal wealth management space is called robo-advisory, which leverages client information through algorithms, automating and recommending tailored investments to individuals.

When it comes to self-driving cars, the public tends to focus on developments for private vehicles for individuals, but there are also some significant advances underway in other categories such as shuttle busses. In the latest piece of news, Navya, a startup out of France that makes driverless shuttles, has raised 34 million ( 30 million) in funding to build out its team, technology and sales. The funding is coming from two strategic backers, public transportation provider Keolis and automotive parts group Valeo, along with Qatari investors Group8. Navya is not disclosing its valuation but one report from Funderbeam estimates it at 222 million after this round. Navya prior to this round had raised 4.5 million ( 4.1 million) from French investors Gravitation, CapDecisif, and Robolution Capital (an investment fund focused only on robotics investments).

In an attempt to make medical diagnoses easier and help both patients and doctors, Chinese search engine company Baidu has announced the launch of Melody, a medical assistant chatbot powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Reported on by VentureBeat, Melody can be found in Baidu's existing Baidu Doctor app for Android and iOS where she will collect medical information from patients before passing it on to doctors. The chatbot has been developed to ask questions on important health factors such as age and symptoms, before passing the answers on to doctors in an easy-to-use form. Doctors can then proceed with their diagnosis and respond to patients, reducing the amount of time that patients and medical professionals spend exchanging basic information. To make sure information is accurate, Melody only sends responses on behalf of doctors after the doctors have verified it, with Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng commenting in an interview with VentureBeat that, "It's not our role to diagnose -- it's the doctors' role to diagnose. We try to assist the doctors."