SAP, the 23.3 billion market leader in Enterprise application software has upped its game in India, by bringing into its campus in Whitefield, Bengaluru, the first batch of startups that are working on core technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud-based software. The new tenants at SAP Labs India campus will be housed at the "StartUp Studio" – a 75 seat incubation facility. Every year, the studio will take around 10 startups, provide them with technical expertise and support and give them access to the large base of SAP customers where appropriate. . The end goal of the Studio is to fine-tune the business of these startups and take them to their next stage of growth. "Startup innovations are happening in India and we recognise that we have to support the Startup Policy launched by the Prime Minister this year," says Bernd Leukert, Member of the Executive Board at SAP, Products and Innovation.

Headlines on artificial intelligence typically belong to globally renowned tech giants, such as Google, Facebook, and Apple. Asia's AI and machine learning startups, on the other hand, rarely make it onto the world stage. "I want a world-competitive AI company coming from Asia," says Tak Lo, the Managing Director of Zeroth, a funding program for early-stage AI and machine learning startups in Asia. "[Part] of that is taking Asian startups and being able to support them from a global network of entrepreneurs." Zeroth, which launched on July 1st, is a three month funding program that offers mentorship and 20,000 USD in capital to early-stage startups.

From harnessing artificial intelligence to understanding our origins, a panel of distinguished scientists outlined the grand challenges for science in the 21st century. Held at Nanyang Technological University and moderated by independent writer and lecturer Tor Norretranders, the panel session comprised Sydney Brenner, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine; W. Brian Arthur, external professor at the Santa Fe Institute; Astronomer Royal Martin Rees; Terrence Sejnowski, Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies; and Eörs Szathmáry, director of the Parmenides Center for the Conceptual Foundations of Science. The scientific industry has seen a marked shift towards industrial science--or science that directly benefits the economy--and away from basic research, said Sydney Brenner, a senior fellow at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore. He lamented that scientists today lack a crucial truth-seeking mentality, by accepting the results of published research without challenging assumptions. In science, where research is built upon research--which potentially leads to an accumulation of mistakes--the practice of critical evaluation is all the more pertinent, Brenner said.

The world's largest radio telescope China completed Sunday could answer one of mankind's oldest questions about the cosmos: is there other life out there? China's Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, could have the ability to detect alien life, as it searches space for strange objects such as neutral hydrogen, faint pulsars, and low frequency gravitational waves, according to China's state-run Xinhua News Agency. The telescope, which China hopes is operational by September, will be open to the global scientific community in up to three years. The magnitude of the 185 million, 500-meter-wide telescope with 4,450 panels attests to the world's increasing commitment to searching for other life in the galaxy. The discovery that life forms on Earth can survive in the harshest environments, as well as estimates the Milky Way, alone, has thousands of Earth-like planets, has spurred these investments.

Each Sunday, we publish a list of top articles and other content related to manufacturing in areas like quality control, product development, supply chain management, sourcing, auditing and law. The world of manufacturing is constantly evolving. It never seems to stop. Just when one technology seems to take center stage, another one steps up. One big performer on the horizon is machine learning.

Some time in earlyFacebook will be'better than humans' in a DECADE, Mark Zuckerberg claims. Read more ... » 2016, Siddhartha Pahwa thought it would be "disruptive" if he could make a softwareAutomation of the creative: Are the bots coming for our creative and marketing departments?. Read more ... » that will allow users to book a cab on WhatsApp. That would give Pahwa's Meru Cabs a technologicalMan and machine, human and bot. Read more ... » edge over other cab aggregators such as Uber and Ola, but to his disappointment WhatsApp did not allow automatedAutomation of the creative: Are the bots coming for our creative and marketing departments?.

Amazon wasn't the only technology stock to outshine the broader market for tech shares during the last three months. Investors also hit the'play' button on shares of companies that get all or most of their revenue from the computer-games business. Sony (SNE), Activision Blizzard (ATVI), Electronic Arts (EA) and NetEase all posted market-trouncing returns for the second quarter, a period when the Nasdaq was essentially flat. So did shares of Nvidia (NVDA), whose graphics chips are used in powerful computers favored by gamers. The question now for momentum investors is how far the stocks can run, as these issues tend to be volatile.

German car maker BMW has announced that it is joining forces with US computer chip giant Intel and the Israeli technology firm Mobileye to develop self-driving cars. The three companies'are collaborating to bring solutions for highly and fully automated driving into series production by 2021,' they said in a joint statement. The news comes amid growing interest in self-driving cars following tests over the past few years by Google and research by several major automakers. The future of BMW could see driverless cars rolled out by 2021 in an effort to make travel'safer and easier'. Pictured is the German car firm's i3 electric car Germany's premium auto makers are at the centre of thecountry's global reputation for meticulous engineering. But with the expected shift in focus from a car's body toits brains, the risk is that the expertise will accumulate insilicon valley or in China, rather than Germany's carmakingregions of Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemburg.

In April, a group of Finnish farmers outfitted a spindly black drone with a remote-controlled chainsaw and filmed it decapitating snowmen. They called it "Killer Drone." More formally, it was a DJI S1000. This spring, marine biologists flew a drone over the Sea of Cortez to capture samples of the fluid sprayed from the blowholes of blue whales. It was a DJI Inspire 1.

When I first spotted Shift Technology with their focus on fraud detection for insurance, I assumed I would find a venture in Israel (which is known for smarts in finding the bad guys in cyberspace, as we outlined when we went to Israel on our Fintech global tour). So I was surprised to find that Shift Technology is a Paris based venture. There is a lot more tech innovation in France than the image of economic sclerosis would lead you to assume. The next thing that jumps out at you is that they recently closed a 10m Series A round in a tough market from a top tier VC (Accel Partners). So they must be doing something right.